"Hey! Which one of you owns this place?"
"It's me! I am the owner of this restaurant."
"You called us an hour ago? There was a troublemaker, no?"
"Yes, a few. They roughed me up a bit about the vodka. They're gone now."
"Oh, they are? What now, eh?"
"Everything is fine now. Thank you for your response, but we don't need your services anymore. You can leave now."
"Leave? Leave? Why should we? You called us, and we're here. Why should we leave?"
With that, the burly head Chechen leaned over the bar-top, his face right up against, almost pressing, the restaurant manager's.
"Listen, you spineless Azeri dipshit," he lowed menacingly. "You knew what you're in for when you bought protection from us. You know our stock, you know that unlike you salt-mining fishies, we mountain people have our heads as hard as our cocks. We never give up, do you understand? We'll chase those thugs all the way down to Petrozavodsk; as long as we are called, we must make them -- we must make someone fall."
Turning around, he bellowed to the clientele, "Now, who else has a problem with the vodka?" And the crowd, at least those who had not had time to discreetly steal away into the night, stared mutely at the Chechens in reply, frozen with terror. The head thug took that as a resounding Yes, and his clique set upon the customers with knives, baseball bats, and ravenous glee.
[Background]
