True to Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  “God damn it, Mae!” Kitt rolled his shoulder, pitched aside the scarlet-stained garden dibber he’d driven into the man’s artery, and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, all his teeth still in place, the cut inside his cheek. “Run means bloody run away, not run further into the sodding greenhouse and stop!” He grabbed her hand and jerked her forward, stomping along the gravel pathway, through the poisoned rainforest, toward the exit she should have already used to escape.

  “There’s a crocodile.” She thumbed behind them. “A crocodile, Kitt.’

  “Alligator. That’s an alligator.”

  “What’s feckin’ next, a box of spiders?”

  The front entrance wooshed again. Kitt wanted to yank her off the gravel path, but everything off the path was potentially harmful or lethal. He peeked through foliage, back in the direction where two dead men lay. He drew the gun from the holster beneath his blood-dappled, chicken-shit-dusted jacket, removed the clip, cleared the chamber, pocketed the bullet, set the safety.

  “Tanja!” a gruff voice called out, feet moving on gravel.

  “Oh, goody. There’s your box of spiders, Mae,” Kitt whispered at her ear, pulling the windmill scarf from her coat pocket, handing the fabric to her.

  “You stink,” she whispered back, tying the cheap polyester about her fair hair.

  “Take off your shoes and coat, play along, Tanja. I’m sorry if I’m rough.” He looked at her, his breath suddenly catching. “Christ, I don’t want to hurt, you, but I might.”

  Mae glanced at his weapon. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Just don’t shoot me.” She shrugged out of the coat, let it fall to the ground, and toed off her Mary-Janes. “Bianco!” she shouted.

  “Tanja, unni sei?” he said urgently, in Sicilian.

  Kitt grasped her wrist, pulled her forward to his chest, kissed her gently, took a breath, wrapped an arm around her neck, and pressed the muzzle of his Beretta against her head, just below her ear.

  Mae stumbled backwards over gravel, the little pebbles hurting bare feet. “Ca sugnu!” she said loudly, the sharp grit underfoot and gun at her head added a note of realism to her acting.

  Kitt shoved Mae into the open part of the path, just behind where two men lay dead and the hairy-armed gorilla of a man stood looking down at them, one hand on his hip. Bianco was unarmed. Others who would be armed would soon arrive. Kitt adjusted his arm around Mae’s neck. “You move and I’ll shoot you,” he said.

  Bianco turned slightly, holding a rectangular yellow first-aid kit about the size of a loaf of sliced bread, a green marijuana leaf sticker covering over the red cross. He wore long rubber gloves, white coveralls, and knee-high rubber garden boots. “Che cazzu fai?”

  With a grunt, Mae leaned into Kitt more. “Che cazzu pensi chi facciu?”

  “Do you speak English?” Kitt said, irritated.

  “Parra sicilianu?” Bianco said, matching his inflection, shaking his head, looking up from the bodies. “No. You don’t speak Sicilian. What do you want, Mr Leslie Templar, Hedison’s Auction House Superhero Investigator?

  “I want you to stop wasting my time. Who are you?”

  “I am Bianco,” he said, pronouncing it Biancu.

  “Are you the cappu? I want to speak to the cappu.”

  “Cappu! Oh, you do speak Sicilian!” He shook his darkly stubbled face. “I could be the boss, I could be the big boss or the little boss. It depends on how you look at it. What do you want, besides me to not waste your time?”

  “I’ll be honest. You’ve spooked me.”

  “What is spook?” Bianco frowned.

  Kitt pushed the gun muzzle, moving Mae’s head. “I’m sorry. You’ve made me a little nervous. A friend of mine died last night. He was poisoned, he drank poisoned tea, and now I find myself here, in this little greenhouse full of poison where two men wanted to kill me, just like they killed my colleague in London. Perhaps it wasn’t these exact men who killed Jill Charteris, but I know what I’m up against. See? I’m spooked.” He lifted the gun, waved it, and set it back beneath Mae’s ear.

  “Jesu,” she gasped appropriately.

  Kitt went on performing, “You’ve got me spooked. So, before you ask, let me tell you what I know. Vlaming has been secretly selling off his family’s jewels and hiding money in an offshore account. You’re blackmailing him because he’s exposed you or made you vulnerable somehow. I think it has something to do with the men working in your jumbo greenhouse. You’d kill Vlaming, but you need him for some reason. I’m hoping you’ll need me too because I know all kinds of people, people with money. If you think the work Ruby Bleuville did was lucrative and impressive, wait ‘til you see what I can bring to the table.”

  “Ruby Bleuville was caught. She was very sloppy and made some people very unhappy.”

  “Which is why she’s dead now.” Kitt smiled, baring his bottom teeth. “Ruby wasn’t working with the right people.”

  “Who are the right people—” The phone that bulged in Bianco’s front pocket began to play AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. “Scusa, scusa. May I?” he said.

  Kitt jerked his chin. “Make it quick.”

  Bianco tucked the first aid kit under an elbow and burrowed furry fingers into trousers that were a little too tight. “Pronto?” he said, mobile at his ear. “Ca sugnu e serra… Si, lavuri in corsu…

  “Really?” Mae whispered. “You’re having a monologue moment?”

  “I need information,” Kitt murmured. “I want you to get his phone.”

  “Take it, you have the gun.”

  “Did you not see me remove the bullets?” Kitt began walking, moving Mae backwards until they were a metre and a half’s length from Bianco. “That’s enough now,” he said.

  The man’s eyes grew large in his dark face when the gun shifted from Mae to level with his chest. He ended the call.

  “Toss the phone on the ground.” Kitt said, tipping his head.

  The mobile hit the gravel and so did Mae when Kitt let her go, the scarf slipping from her head to droop around her neck. She rose and picked sharp pebbles from her kneecaps.

  “You are not Tanja!” Bianco’s mouth hung open.

  “No, I am not Tanja,” she said flicking away a red-stained stone.

  “Oh, ouch,” Kitt said, looking at Mae, at the grazes on her knees and the scarlet trickle down the front of her legs. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do hate the sight of your blood.”

  “You’ve had worse. I’ve had worse,” she said.

  “You are not Tanja,” Bianco said again. Where is Tanja?”

  Kitt tipped his head to one side. “Your little girlfriend is dead, poisoned, probably from something that came from this very greenhouse.”

  Bianco swore in Sicilian.

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Mae said.

  “Was that,” Kitt squinted one eye, “was something about my mother and the size of my cock?”

  Bianco swore again and threw down the first aid box. It made a thud and he gestured, extending his index and little finger, making the sign of the cuckold as he stomped angry feet, kicking the kit in his tantrum.

  Kitt had had enough. He took three steps and gave the man a solid clout, the Beretta making a wooden sounding clunk as it hit his skull. Bianco collapsed sideways in a heap.

  “You know, the only time I have ever seen you use that thing is to hit someone with it. You have never fired it as intended,” she said, hands on her hips.

  Kitt bent and picked up the phone, tossing it to Mae. “Let’s see to your knees, my love,” he said, reached for the first aid kit, and opened it. The dried marijuana partially obscured the saline wash, antibacterial wipes, and bandages inside. He brushed away the cannabis the with the stubby little finger on his left hand, looking for tweezers, grey-green dusting his pared-down pinkie. The pain hit in less than the blink of an eye.

  The box fell, spilling the contents across the ground and Kitt rose swearing, shaking his hand to get rid of a surging, super-
heated electric sting. In another heartbeat, the pain intensified, his finger had turned bright red. He wiped the finger on his jacket and searing, stinging, electrified pain exploded, taking his breath away, the fiery detonation repeating and repeating and repeating.

  Nose streaming, eyes coursing with tears, his mind ran through a list of nerve agents and blistering agents, for half a second, then the blistering heat and stinging power current deepened and hammered him with a surge of dizzy nausea. He caught Mae’s horrified expression and she moved toward him, dropping Bianco’s phone, her hand stretching out. “Don’t touch me!” he shouted, “Don’t touch me!”

  In incomprehensible, boiling, caustic, electrocuting, insect-stinging agony, he staggered to the front entrance, gasping, tripping around two dead men. With one hand, he yanked off his belt, and looped it over his forearm, tightening it, idiotically thinking a tourniquet might slow the spread of the toxin and diminish the pain. It did not. Hunched over, he retched, staggered to his feet and reeled to the wide sink near the door, thumping on the faucet, shoving his boiling, caustic, electrocuting, insect-stinging hand beneath the flowing liquid that only made the boiling, caustic, electrocuting, insect stinging increase. Kitt screamed and screamed.

  Desperate, panting, swearing, his nose running into a flood of tears, he pawed at the secateurs he saw hanging beside a microfibre duster, his left hand in a vat of acid, jolting with electric current, and unremitting excruciating bee, hornet and wasp stings. He held his wet, dripping hand on the edge of the sink. “Mae,” he sobbed. “Mae…” He looked at the secateurs and back to her. “Cut it off!”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Take it off! Take it off!”

  Wide-eyed, Mae grabbed the little garden cutters and set them into place. “Oh, God. Oh, Jaysus. Oh, Hamish.” She squeezed the handles together, severing what remained of his already truncated left pinkie. It was like cutting through a lilac branch.

  Kitt’s relief was instant, a rushing moment of short-lived euphoria trounced by shock a split-second later. He tried to breathe through the churning howl in his ears, tried to blink away vision that warped and began swimming. He looked at a distorted, tunnelling image of Mae, the front of her salmon pink dress spotted with crimson. “I’m sorry,” he said in a faraway voice. And fainted.

  Dumbly, blankly unmoving, Mae stared at Kitt, blood pooling under his hand, spreading across and soaking into gravel. Each breath she took offered a choice: panic or act. Panic or act. Panic or act. Vacant of any sensation, Mae dropped to her knees and felt for a pulse. His heartbeat was strong, steady. She looked about for something to wrap about his hand to stop the bleeding, scanning the rubber gloves, the surgical masks, the other gardening tools, the rack of jars with their dried leaves. She yanked the windmill scarf from her neck and wrapped it around Kitt’s hand to try to staunch the flow of blood. Then she got to her feet.

  And ran.

  Barefoot, Mae shoved through the door, into the wooshing foyer and rushed outside, trying to remember the route that would take her to the huge greenhouse, the windmill, the field of beheaded tulips, and back to the car. She kicked through the little chain across the entrance, and darted though the arched hedge of toxic yew. She ran along a path opposite the maze, and past statues of Proserpina, her mother Ceres, and the Four Seasons, to a gravel pathway lined with the last of the spring daffodils, hyacinth, muscari, and fritillaria. She rounded the curving, fresh-mown lawn and small amphitheatre, a fountain of the water nymph Galatea in the centre and stopped dead at the passenger side of a black Mercedes van with tinted windows. She jerked open the door. “Help me! Help me!”

  A man with a shiny bald head and heavy black brows peered up at her, Felix on his lap. Then the very handsome man in the driver’s seat leaned over and smiled, his heavy, vanilla-based cologne wafted out, assailing her nostrils. It was a perfume she had smelled before when she’d been drugged and held upright in a hot car travelling on a winding road to the cemetery in Linguaglossa, where her husband Caspar had been buried.

  “Buongiorno, Signora Valentine,” Giacomo Negroni said.

  The side door slid open and Mae stumbled backwards, tripping over daffodils, falling on her arse.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mae stared at the black van, stunned, shaking, wanting to be sick. Then Felix was on her lap licking her ear, her face, her neck. Her arms went around the dog and she held him close as Bryce and a man with a crooked nose pulled her to her feet as an ambulance rolled up behind the van, tyres noisy on gravel.

  “Hey,” Bryce said holding her elbow, “Hey, look at me. Look at me. Where’s Kitty? Where’s Kitty, Mae?”

  “H-he’s in a greenhouse on the other side of the hedge, and he’s hurt. The place is full of poisonous things, the greenhouse is full poison. He-he…” Mae cut her eyes to the other man holding her up. His name was Vitali. Last July, he had worked undercover for the Italian government as part of an operation to infiltrate the Gallia Family. He’d split her lip open and Kitt had broken his nose. “Timothy? What…is…” Her gaze shot to the other man, the perfumed handsome one, and she watched Giacomo Negroni jerk his head at a tall, bald man and two paramedics who were pulling on hazard gear before they headed off in the direction she’d indicated. They already knew about the toxic little greenhouse.

  “This is not what you think, Mae,” Bryce said.

  “How would you know what I think, Timothy? This man hit me,” she scowled at Vitali, “and that other man kidnapped me last year. He sat with me in the back of a stinking hot car when I was drugged. We rode to a cemetery where I thought I was going to be entombed alive. He wore a horrid cologne to mask the scent of his sweat.”

  Bryce’s hand went to her shoulder, his green eyes peering down at her as the dog licked him. “You heard Kitt say the Italians asked us to step away from the event. This is why. The DIA and AISE have been carrying out investigations. Negroni has been working undercover, just like Vitali was last year with Vivi Gallia, Ernst Largo, and Aurelio Martini in Sicily.”

  Vitali nodded. “This is true.” His grip on her slid away.

  “Hey!” Negroni called out and three heads turned in his direction.

  Bryce blew out a breath. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said. “There’s Kitty now, walking on his own two feet.” He let out another huff of relief. “You two have me wanting to change my pants, Mae.” He let her go.

  Mae turned for Kitt as well taking a single step before Vitali grabbed her elbow. She looked down at his hand and glowered at him, the dog squirming in her arms. “I thought by now you’d have had your nose fixed,” she said, trying to jerk away as he held fast.

  “I see you have not forgiven me for striking you last summer,” he said. “Please know, I am not proud of what I did to you, and it pains me—” Suddenly Vitali was on his arse, in the daffodils, blood spilling from his lips. He swore in Italian and spat out a tooth.

  “I did warn you last year, Vitali.” Kitt said, gravelly-voiced, stone-faced, a bloodied, black-dotted, once-white scarf wrapped about his hand. He turned to Mae and smiled. “You ran,” he said. “I’m so proud of you. I told you I’d be right behind you.”

  Mae sat inside the ambulance beside Kitt. He lay on a little bed, the rear door open, as a paramedic with light brown hair and half-moon reading glasses checked the level of the painkiller in the hypodermic.

  Kitt reached for Mae’s hand and squeezed it as he received his injection. The blood of his injury rinsed away, his knuckles were red and bruised from the fight he’d had with the men in the Crocodile—Alligator—greenhouse, and from the thump he’d given Vitali ten minutes ago.

  The battle with the men in the greenhouse didn’t irritate her the way the belting of Vitali did. She knew it was incongruous, but it was the closest, most normal thing she could latch onto, and, Jaysus, that wallop really pissed her off. “You seem to be working under the mistaken impression I am a dainty little thing that must be wrapped in cotton wool and held close to your chest.
”

  “I like holding you close to my chest.”

  “Do you think that’s the first time I’ve ever been menaced or harassed by a man? Jaysus, what woman by the age of fifty hasn’t been pursued, teased, bullied, or hassled half a dozen times in her life?”

  The paramedic glanced at her, then at Kitt again. “Perhaps this is not a time for a domestic argument,” she said, in a motherly tone.

  Kitt ignored her.

  So did Mae. She squeezed his hand harder. “I am quite capable of taking care of myself, Hamish.”

  “Yes, I know you are capable,” he said, her fingernails digging into the back of sore knuckles. “But my mind goes to the evening you were mugged on Kensington Park Road, the morning when Sal and the banker Largo tried to murder you in my kitchen, the afternoon when the Italian DIA drugged you and kidnapped you and took you to a different location. Vitali and Negroni are the bloody DIA. There’s also the fun night this past New Year’s day, when the fancy-pants hitman tried to shoot you, as well as the following morning with the El Salvadoran football fan, the one who tried to crush your larynx, not to mention the petite woman who put a bullet through your shoulder, but those instances aside, yes, I know how adept you are taking care of yourself, especially with cleaning products, I know you have always been able to take care of yourself. But you have not been trained for this line of work.”

  The paramedic rolled off her rubber gloves and shoved them in a yellow bin. “I’ll leave you two to rest.”

  “I do not need training to tell Vitali to go to hell. I know how to hit a man in the balls. I did not need you to rescue me, you sodding bully!”

  “Bully? He had his hands on you, Mae.”

  “He had helped me stand.”

  “He touched you. I am a man of my word. I once told him if he ever touched you again, he would lose teeth. I’m a bit miffed I only knocked out one.”

  “That’s your standard threat to men who dare lay a hand on me. ‘You will lose teeth.’ Jaysus.”