Adventures of Boris: Prom Season

It is prom season here in the U.S., and my friend Boris the Sheep/Russian Spy just stumbled home after an adventure last night at a prom on the East Side.

Boris told me it all this started when he discovered that Phibs, the penguin/criminal master-mind, was planning to assassinate the daughter of the Hungarian ambassador. Boris got orders from Moscow to protect the ambassador's daughter (Hungary being an important strategic ally of Russia) and, early in the investigation, he was able to run down a few of Phibs's henchmen at a seedy underground poker joint up in Washington Heights.

Boris showed up there early in the night and was up $6,000 by the time Phibs's henchmen, a bookmaker named Sharky and a gorilla called Abe, had arrived. Abe and Sharky were both 38 hours in to a weekend-long bender and were ready for a blow-out game.

Boris staked himself. There were ten players altogether including Boris, Abe, Sharky, a French bear named Bearie and George the Mystic Rooster, who said he was an episcopal priest up from Kannapolis, N.C. but didn't much look it.

Boris played it safe at first. Over the first six hours, Bearie and George steadily won while Abe and Sharky steadily lost, and Boris stayed about the same, mostly by picking up the blinds when he was on the button. The others lost their stakes one by one. Around 4:00 a.m., Boris caught Bearie going all-in on a badly-timed bluff and cleaned out her roll with just trip 7s. He gave her $100 for a cab ride, and was such a gentleman about it that Bearie left him her number.

Boris, George the Mystic Rooster and the two henchmen were the only ones left in the game. By this time, Boris had befriended Abe and Sharky, and he could tell they were getting frustrated with George. Finally, after Sharky lost three big pots in a row to George and was ready to leave the table, Boris exposed the rooster as a mechanic. Boris had made him after the first hour, of course, but his sense of timing was impeccable. As Sharky and Abe happily kicked the feathers out of George, they offered to take Boris out for a night on the town.


Two hours later, somewhere between Chumley's and Lit, Sharky and Abe revealed that they worked for Phibs and that the assassination was planned for that very night at the U.N. School's prom. Later, at Hiro, Boris slipped a chemical agent in to Sharky's night cap while he was trying to order sushi, left a business card with Abe ((BORIS STOLICH - WOOL IMPORT/EXPORT)) and excused himself for the night.

Late that afternoon, Boris got the call he expected from Abe. Sharky was sick, he said, and Abe needed a second for the assassination. If Boris could take his place, he would be well compensated. Boris agreed, hung up, and immediately made another call.

He met Abe in the Garment District in the late afternoon. It was there he finally learned the details of the plan. Abe had coralled himself a date with a young filly named Gigi and had insisted on bringing his "friend." Once inside, Boris would poison the punchbowl at the U.N. School Prom just as the daughter of the Hungarian ambassador saddled up with her date. Then Abe would take a flop on the card table and scuttle the rest of the punch as she left (Phibs, who Abe called only "The Penguin," wanted to minimize collateral damage to avoid police attention.)

They would smuggle in the poison in a plastic flask to make it through the metal detector. Abe showed Boris the flask. Boris took it, opened it, took a casual sniff of the poisonous agent, closed the flask, and handed it back.

Boris said the plan seemed solid, but asked Abe why he didn't simply poison the punch himself. Abe admitted that he'd seen a picture of the Hungarian ambassador's daughter, Lisa, and she was cute as a button. He simply couldn't bring himself to do the deed.

Abe gave him a meaningful look. Boris would be able to go through with the plan, wouldn't he? Boris assured Abe that he would. Still, the Gorilla said he would feel more comfortable if he could hold on to the flask until the moment Boris had to strike. Of course, Boris said. There was one last detail - Boris would need a date to the U.N. prom. Abe suggested he call that nice bear from the night before. Boris agreed, and gave Bearie a call as they left to catch a cross-town cab.


Boris and Abe, dressed in tuxedos, met their dates outside the U.N. school just as the party inside got underway. Gigi turned out to be a tall girl with long hair, and Bearie looked radiant in a pink dress and large, matching bag. Though Abe was nervous, Boris was the picture of charm. They danced the night away until Lisa, the Hungarian ambassador's daughter, arrived, and she went straight for the punchbowl.

This was the moment of truth. Abe gave Boris the flask and ran interference with Lisa, engaging her in polite conversation while watching Boris out of the corner of his eye. Abe saw Boris pour the contents of the flask in to the punch bowl before releasing Lisa to her fate.

Lisa drank, and Abe immediately made the flop, knocking the card table down and spilling punch everywhere. It was Bearie, pushing past Lisa, who first came to his side. Boris arrived a moment later, apologizing for his "drunk friend" and, along with Bearie, helping Abe and his date outside. There, Abe, racked with guilt, excused himself and went back to his place alone. Later, Boris told me, he had made his own way back to my apartment.

Once Boris finished his story, I was flabergasted. What of Lisa, the beautiful Hungarian ambassador's daughter? I asked him. All of that was under control, he told me. With only one sniff, Boris had identified the poison. His next call had been to a Russian agent to whom he revealed its nature, using a code he himself had developed that made it seem like he was arranging a date.

It was Bearie, pushing past the ambassador's daughter when Abe was distracted by the flop he'd taken on the punchbowl, who had administered the antidote to Lisa, sticking her with a needle concealed in her oversized pink bag and leaving her and the rest of the guests none the wiser. Bearie was the other Russian agent - she had been in on it from the start.

It was an amazing story, I told Boris. I offered to take him to breakfast, but he waved me off. After Abe had excused himself, Boris had taken Gigi and Bearie both out for a night on the town, and they'd ended up at Gigi's place. He would eat later - the two girls had worn him out.