Fearless ; The Smoke Child

by Lee Stone

  ‘Turn around slowly,’ Lockhart said. Luis did as he was told, and found Lockhart still seated, his feet up on the table and the nickel-plated revolver in his hand.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said to Luis and Rocky.

  They did as they were told, and although Lockhart didn’t acknowledge Glinka, he sent the girl in the shorts to find clothes for him. Both of them disappeared, the naked man clutching his ribs and rasping. Finding him was a bonus, and Lockhart thought fast about turning it to his advantage.

  ‘This is what I was talking about,’ he said, shaking his head at the two gangsters. ‘This is why you two don’t have a million dollars to put on the table. Because you’re sloppy. Because you’re doing business while you’ve got a stranger wandering around your house. How much of our conversation did he hear?’

  Silence.

  ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘Look, the doors are thick and…’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Lockhart repeated slowly.

  ‘He’s nobody,’ Luis said. ‘We’ve just been checking him out…’

  Lockhart held his free hand up and said, ‘I don’t want to hear it. He’s coming with me. I’ll deal with him.’

  Luis looked up from the table.

  ‘How?’

  Lockhart glared at him.

  ‘You’re right,’ Luis said. ‘Stupid question. None of my business. I don’t want to know.’

  His voice tailed off as he saw Glinka return to the doorway. He hadn’t wasted any time getting dressed. He was wearing an ancient Wu-Tang Clan tee-shirt and a pair of black combats, both of which swamped him.

  Lockhart pointed the revolver at him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  Glinka struggled for an answer. He sounded like his tongue had been taped to the roof of his mouth.

  ‘I’m a reporter,’ he began. ‘I swear, whoever these guys think I am…’

  Lockhart cut Glinka off, looking from him to the two dealers, and back again.

  ‘They think you’re a reporter,’ he said, unblinking. ‘And that’s the whole problem. And now, you just became my problem.’

  ‘Listen,’ Glinka began. ‘I saw nothing. Can’t you just…?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Lockhart said. It was the best advice anyone could have given Glinka right then. It was time to move. Luis was smart enough to let the situation play out, but Rocky was beginning to strain on his leash again, looking for an opportunity to get himself shot. Lockhart took a handful of dollars and placed them on the table.

  ‘That should cover the liquor and the clothes,’ he said, nodding at Glinka. ‘You let Jimmy Penh know I’m keen to do business okay?’

  Luis nodded, as Lockhart pushed back his chair and stood up.

  ‘Today,’ he added, and he grabbed the hold-all and headed out of the room. ‘I’ll be in the café you shook down earlier.’

  He grabbed Glinka by the scruff of the neck and pushed him along in front of him, squeezing past the vacant girl in the Hustler shirt. He handed her the Magnum as he passed, knowing that he’d be out of the door before she figured out what to do with it.

  44

  Matilda Braganza’s hand had shaken as she pulled open the drawer. To her relief, the gun had been exactly where she had left it. She had left it deliberately within easy reach for this exact moment. She had watched Lockhart fall to the floor and as the intruder had raised his bat; she had yelled out, and the guy who was filling her hallway stopped in his tracks. Lockhart was out cold on the floor, but once the stillness settled, she could hear him breathing. She owed him, and she took time to turn him safely onto his side, all the time pointing the gun at the man who had forced his way through the front door. Then, reluctantly, she stepped over Lockhart and headed out into the corridor, keeping the assailant two steps ahead and within easy shooting range.

  ‘Try anything,’ she said, ‘anything, and I’ll shoot you.’

  He tried something anyway. When the elevator hit the ground floor, they walked slowly across the lobby and out into the storm. As soon as they hit the cold night air, the guy bolted. And true to her word, she shot him. There was lightning and sheet rain. Howling wind and falling debris. Nobody heard the gunfire. She aimed low, and the bullet hit him in the back of the knee, felling him as he ran. He went down like he was made of stone, but then he rolled and limped on, ducking into an alleyway and disappearing. He’d live. No question about that, although Matilda was amazed at her own ruthlessness. Amazed until she thought about what they’d done to her, and everything she’d had to give. Until she thought about Kate, dead in Cambodia. And her daughter, wherever she was. Still holding the gun, she pulled her soaking hair out of her eyes with the back of her wrist and pushed on into the foul night. She had slowed Jimmy Penh’s man down, but she had to get uptown to the Elbow before he did.

  The Elbow. As Matilda beat on through the rain, she wished to God she’d never set foot inside the place. She had first arrived in the spring, poached from The Tiger Bar on Cliff Street. Jake Leisler had picked her out and spirited her away. The Elbow was glamorous. Expensive New York artwork hung from the walls. There were four bars and two restaurants, all packed full of celebrities and the inevitable hangers-on. People famous for being famous. There were thirteen bedrooms spread across two floors, all reserved for members. The top floor was Jimmy Penh’s private place.

  Matilda was smart enough to watch who came and went without asking questions, and pretty enough to hustle towards the top of the pile of courtesan girls. It wasn’t long before she caught Jimmy’s attention. She was studying art history, and he had asked her to pick out some of the pieces that now hung from the walls. Her taste had impressed him. And in the way that all dancing girls are commodities and all street gangs are hierarchical, Leisler had melted away, and she had become Jimmy’s thing.

  She knew he was the boss, and it didn’t take her long to figure out how he made his money. He was charming though and had a taste for the finer things in life. In the rain, Matilda felt a burning pang of shame. She had let him turn her head. She was just a girl. Just a girl from Syracuse, she had always told herself. But she had wanted more from life. More experience. Jimmy had given it to her. He asked her opinion about up-and-coming New York artists over bottles of perfectly chilled Krug. He told her stories about his time in the tiny village of Reims in the heart of Champagne, where Krug competed for vineyard acreage with Piper Heidsieck and Veuve Clicquot. He picked her out a Monique Lhuillier from Barney’s so she could feel right at home in the auction salerooms at Christie’s when they went buying. And she had been completely suckered in by all of it.

  Dull anger washed through Matilda’s chest like the thunder rolling through New York City. Storm water was rising out of the sewers in frothing white churns, raising the ironworks along the sidewalk and spilling out into the swollen gutters.

  It hadn’t been long before Matilda had stopped dancing. She was promoted to manager, keeping the door tight and the bar slick and the kitchens fast and precise. She moved in with Jimmy on the top floor, soaking up the high life the way sun-bleached driftwood consumes the ocean’s first foam. It soured as quickly as it bloomed. By the time she realized what he was, it was too late. She fell pregnant. He found other woman. He was colder than she could have imagined, and as her belly grew, he moved her out of his apartment and into one of the public rooms. Soon, the club had a new manager, and Jimmy had a new lover. And Matilda was out, just like that. She told herself every day that all she got was all she deserved.

  Jimmy had been working a deal the day the baby arrived. He was standing on Railroad Avenue waiting for a consignment to chug in from the East River while she was wailing on her back in a delivery suite downtown. She hated that he wasn’t there. She hated what he had done to her. But when the baby arrived, nothing else mattered. It was a boy, and she called him Jessie, after her big brother who had gone to war in Iraq and never come home. Jimmy showed no interest in the baby, even though he had hints of his father’s ear
th brown skin and the same hazel eyes.

  Matilda had saved money from the good times, way back at the Tiger Club. A month after Jessie was born she raided her savings and moved out overnight. It only took them four days to find her. It was Leisler, not Jimmy, who had knocked on the door at some ungodly hour, full of half-hearted compliments and thinly veiled threats. She looked good. Independence was fine for most people. Sure, a member’s club is no place for a small baby. But reality bit soon enough.

  ‘Jimmy is as mad as hell,’ he told her after she reluctantly let him into her place. ‘You didn’t say goodbye, and you took his son.’

  ‘I took his what…?’ Matilda could not keep the contempt from her voice. ‘He never set eyes on our son.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Leisler had said, spreading his palms as though nevertheless somehow settled the argument.

  The familiar sting cut through her as she remembered Leisler, brutish and cold, leaning forward and taking her baby from her arms like he was picking an apple from a tree. She did nothing, frozen in the horror of the moment. It turned out Jimmy had no interest in being a father. The baby was collateral. Leisler returned with a deal two days later. Jimmy’s deal was simple: take a suitcase to Cambodia. Don’t ask questions. In return she could have her baby back. She spent the next week submerged in self-loathing until the self loathing became pure white hot hatred for Jimmy Penh and his gang. She couldn’t call the cops while Jimmy had the baby. But she couldn’t do the job either. She knew Cambodia put drug smugglers to death, and while she couldn’t live without her baby, she didn’t want her baby to have to live without her either. So she switched the cases at JFK, getting Jimmy off her back without risking going to prison herself. It would take her three days to fly back, sweet talk Sean into giving her a gun, and broadside Jimmy Penh. It was the smartest plan ever. Until Jimmy found out. And Kate got killed.

  It took Matilda an hour to get uptown. A sleazy cab driver in a lank gray sweater picked her up near Kips Bay, propositioned her the whole journey through the Upper East Side, taking no notice at all the street beyond his wiper blades. He dropped her unscathed on Amsterdam ten minutes later, and she slipped immediately into the shadows. She had swept along this road a million times with Jimmy, and she had been too intoxicated by the power of it all to notice the details of her surroundings. Now, in the rain, she saw the reality; dark needle-strewn corners and run-down padlocked stores. She moved from one awning to the next, pulling her hair from her eyes and watching out for Leisler or Jimmy or any other trouble. But nothing and nobody came.

  When she reached it, The Elbow was humming like a thing alive. Warm light spilled from the frosted windows, shapes and hints of movement ebbing and flowing across the glass. The temperature had dropped and her breath steamed into the night sky. From the opposite side of the road, Matilda watched for the usual crowd to slip in and out. But everyone was sheltering from the rain and Matilda had Amsterdam all to herself. She settled, leaning back against the wall, and stood for a moment like an athlete focusing before the explosion of the starting gun.

  And in that moment, in the rain, aloneness hit her. She was a mother without a child, a twin without a sister. Her brother was gone, and even Charlie, the guy who had come from nowhere to save her skin, was lying cold on her apartment floor. There had been no time to wait for him to come round. No time for anything except this, whatever this was. She had hoped switching passports with Kate would have given her an edge. But Jimmy knew she was coming. He had sent someone to the apartment, so he knew.

  She crossed the street to a side street that ran alongside The Elbow, moving quickly towards the fire escape that clung to the side of the building the way an infant clings to its mother. When she reached the fourth floor, she ran her fingers along the edge of the rotting wooden window frame. Jimmy Penh had an eye for the finer things in life, but he liked the apartment for its bohemian appearance. The window was rickety, and when she pushed, it gave way. Matilda imagined Jimmy sitting inside, oblivious to her arrival. That’s the thing about being the bogeyman, she thought. You don’t expect anyone to come sneaking through your own windows.

  She scissored inside, shifting her weight slowly from the windowsill to the polished wood below. She slipped her shoes off and set off into the place she had once lived. Instinctively, she knew where to go. Almost half of Jimmy’s apartment was open plan, but the far end was labyrinthine, bedrooms, and bathrooms spiking off a long tight corridor. The artwork on the walls had not changed since Matilda had left, she noted, and she wondered for a moment what perks Jimmy might be getting from the woman who had taken her place. It was probably just the sex, although Jimmy had never been an impressive or adventurous lover. She moved silently across the open plan room. The whole apartment was awash with blue moonlight that had broken through the soup of heavy cloud, and she felt exposed and vulnerable.

  The rest of the apartment was dark, and as she moved into the narrow corridor at the far end of the room, there was nothing except for a gentle glow radiating from the room at the far end. A nightlight. Matilda was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. She could sense her baby drawing her toward the room. Closer, she could hear him breathing. Everything had been about this. Cambodia. Kate. The terror and the pain. Now everything would be okay. Her heart bursting, she took a step through the doorway towards the child. There he was. Her child, untouched and beautiful. Relief flooded through her. A primal, choking rush pulsed through her veins like adrenalin. She felt wet tears of joy welling up as she reached forward to take the flesh and blood she had yearned for… and behind her, silent in the doorway, his eyes glinting in the darkness, Jimmy Penh smiled.

  45

  Lockhart and Glinka hurried away from the apartment in Siberia, reaching a battered set of elevator doors without speaking. Lockhart relinquished his hold on Glinka as soon as they were inside the elevator.

  ‘Please.’

  Lockhart looked at him. ‘Please, what?’

  ‘I have a wife and…’

  ‘Jesus Glinka, you’d have to do better than that.’

  It took Glinka a split second to register that Lockhart knew his name, and by that time the elevator doors had opened at the ground floor.

  ‘Come on,’ Lockhart said. ‘It’s your lucky day.’

  ‘Call the newsroom,’ Lockhart said once they got back to the café. ‘Talk to Marie Saunders, tell her you’re safe.’

  Glinka started padding down the pockets of the pants he didn’t own, searching for his mobile.

  ‘There’s a payphone at the back,’ Lockhart told him, and he watched as Glinka headed slowly between the tables towards the back of the café.

  ‘You work fast,’ the barista said, nodding after Glinka. ‘I didn’t think I’d be seeing him again.’

  ‘Serendipity,’ Lockhart said. ‘I didn’t think I’d find him either.’

  He ordered pastries with the coffee. Glinka looked like he could do with getting a decent meal inside him.

  ‘Oh, and this is what they took earlier,’ Lockhart said as the barista busied herself with grinding beans and forcing the grind into the filters. He handed her a fist full of notes from the hold-all. Somewhere along the food chain, it was probably true. The barista smiled and took the bundle from him, placing it into the register without asking questions.

  ‘Do you know where they took him?’ Lockhart asked as the barista steamed the milk. ‘The Albanian guy?’

  ‘I do not,’ she said. ‘But wherever it was, he was dead before they scooped him up. You can’t help him, and he can’t help you. Shame though, I think you two might have got along.’

  ‘Got along with who?’ Glinka asked, returning to the conversation.

  ‘You ask too many questions,’ the barista told him, her tone motherly and stern. ‘It will get you in trouble one of these days.’

  ‘It already did,’ Glinka said, and he smiled for the first time.

  ‘I’m talking about your friend the Albanian,’ the barista told him.
/>   She thumped a metal jug against the counter to get the froth out of the hot milk and Glinka jumped about a mile, his brow instantly furrowing and worry smudging back across his face.

  ‘Marie wants me back in the newsroom,’ he said, turning to Lockhart. ‘See what we can pull together for tomorrow.’

  ‘I bet she does,’ Lockhart said. ‘But you’ve got time for a coffee first.’

  They had the place to themselves. They found a table at the back and sat dripping while they ate. Glinka took the top off his coffee, the foam clinging to three days of stubble. He watched Lockhart for a minute, weighing him up.

  ‘She said I can trust you,’ he said eventually.

  ‘So you should,’ Lockhart said. ‘You were naked in the middle of some run down tower block until I came along.’

  He added a pinch of salt to his coffee.

  ‘What do you know about Jimmy Penh?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Glinka said. ‘Only that he’s flooded this place with cheap ecstasy pills. He’s got family connections in Asia. Cambodia, I think. They bring the stuff in direct.’

  ‘Where’s he based?’

  Glinka put down his cup.

  ‘Who are you, exactly?’

  ‘I’m an old friend of your editor,’ Lockhart said, pushing his coffee aside and leaning closer to Glinka. ‘That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘I don’t know where Jimmy Penh’s based,’ he said through a mouthful of pastry. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Not exactly?’

  Glinka bit into his Danish and shook his head.

  ‘Somewhere off Amsterdam, I think. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You thought you had an exclusive on the vigilante, yeah?’

  Glinka nodded, still going at the Danish.

  ‘I’m after Jimmy Penh,’ Lockhart said. ‘He probably ordered the hit on your vigilante. The guys who What did you learn while you were in there?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Glinka said. ‘In case you didn’t notice I was naked, and I was pretty sure I was going to die. So excuse me if I didn’t do much snooping.’