A Sentimental Killer

“So that means it’s still the twentieth century now?” she wouldn’t stop.
“Of course. The number ‘ten’ belongs to the first ten, right?”
“Y-yes,” Aunt Mila answered, slightly unsure.
“Well then, the year two thousand also belongs to the twentieth century.”

I turned off the “Matrix,” and on the screen appeared a disgusting young man’s face, constantly grimacing, twisting from side to side, and giggling—one of those advertisement guys who offered a plastic-toothed beauty to swap that miracle gum for a monstrous amount of “regular” one—for cavities, stomatitis, periodontitis, and dandruff. The silly girl grinned and refused that “great honor” in the exact same way as the incomparable Ivan Vasilyevich Bunsha did when Georges Miloslavsky told him: “Sit down… you’ll be king!” — “Never!”

“Idiotism...” I muttered and with a light touch of my finger erased the clown couple from the screen; a bare backside flashed by, and finally—when I switched, I think, to NTV—the screen showed a strict black-and-white Roman profile in the style of the realistic school of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the announcer’s voice cut through:

“As the press service of the FSB reported, the day before yesterday one of the most famous Russian killers really escaped from custody. He was charged with involvement in a series of high-profile contract killings—the former FSB officer Alexey Orlovsky, known in criminal circles under the nickname Heinrich. Born in nineteen hundred and sixty-six, a native of...”