What the hell—I had river and mountains to cross, too. “And castle walls to storm, dragons to slay,” I told the night. I didn’t have the time to ferret out the mystery of Marni Jones.
I was heading for the underground garage around the corner from the square when I saw Jonny. She was with a group near the big fountain in the middle of Rossio. And she wasn’t happy.
22
There were eight or ten people hanging out, most of them young—around Jonny’s age to college age—and three men who were older, in their mid to late twenties. The kids looked like Jonny—spoiled, rich, purposeless. The three older guys had a harder look to them, especially the one arguing with Jonny.
It wasn’t my business and I kept walking, but stopped when I saw one of the hard cases move to the side of Jonny while she argued with his buddy. I had a feeling he was getting into position to grab her. Shit. Getting stomped by Lisbon street trash wasn’t on my agenda, but I couldn’t see the kid get hurt.
I caught the name of the one she was venting at—Santos—and the gist of the argument as I approached. She was pissed about Ecstasy he sold her—not high-quality stuff. Wonderful. Now I could get stomped for a good reason—keeping a fifteen-year-old in drugs.
Santos looked past Jonny as I came up toward them. Most of us think we live in a civilized society, but at a certain level on the streets, brute strength counted for more than brainpower. Santos was built like an artillery shell—not tall, but solid, tapered from the bottom up—big tree-stump legs, big torso, big neck, small head. I wasn’t a pushover but I wasn’t tough, either.
“Hi, Jonny, need a ride home?”
The look on Jonny’s face said she wasn’t sure if she was going to tell me to flake off.
“Fuck off, puta.”
Santos wasn’t calling Jonny a whore—he used the word on me.
“Let’s go get—” As I spoke to Jonny, reaching for her arm, I spun on my heel and threw a right cross for Santos’s face, throwing my shoulder and body weight into it. Just the way I was taught. The punch connected great, nailing Santos on the jaw. The concussion from the blow ran up my arm.
Santos rocked back on his heels and took a half step backward with one foot.
It should have knocked him on his ass. The arm still stung—it felt like I had punched a brick wall.
Santos’s eyes glazed over for a second. When they cleared, they focused on me. Not a human look, but the cold, vicious way a pit bull looks at the exposed neck of another dog.
I could kiss my ass good-bye.
Jonny was suddenly between us, hitting him with a series of kicks.
“You disgusting bastard, João will rip off your balls and feed them to his dogs.”
Santos took the kicks and the diatribe without changing his expression.
Jonny grabbed my arm. “Let’s get out of here, away from these stinking merdas.”
We walked in the direction of the underground garage.
“Obrigado,” she said. “But I didn’t need your help. He wouldn’t touch me, he knows João’s my father.” She gave me a look of false sincerity. “Now you must pay me for the money I lost on his bad pills.”
“Forget it, I’m not into buying drugs.”
She took my arm as we walked.
“What are you into? Sex? We can go to a hotel or fuck when we get back home.”
“Do you think your parents might be a little put out if they find us balling in the living room?”
She shrugged. “I learned everything I know about sex from watching my mother.”
I looked behind us. Santos and his two buddies were following us.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re afraid of João. My father is old but has important friends.”
“They may not hurt you, but that doesn’t mean they won’t tear my head off.”
The Mercedes was three levels down. We got in and I hit the door locks. As I started the engine, she was all over me. She stuck her tongue in my mouth and took my hand, putting it on the warm patch between her legs.
She bit my ear. “We can do it here.”
I pushed her off and got the car into drive. “We’re getting out of here. There’d be no witnesses to tell João anything if the two of us were beaten to death down here.”
I navigated the big Mercedes up the ramps. A surprise was waiting for me on the ramp to the street. It was blocked. A small Fiat was parked on the top of the ramp, facing down at us as I came up to the bottom of the ramp.
Santos got out of the passenger side of the Fiat. In his hand was a three-foot piece of steel pipe. He no longer had an expressionless face—he looked ugly, mean, and pissed.
Jonny looked at me. “Merda.”
“Yeah, like I said, no witnesses.”
I hit the gas and turned the wheel, whipping the car around, its tires screeching loudly in the underground vault. Instead of racing back down the ramps to get trapped further below, I put the car into reverse and turned in the seat to look back at the ramp the Fiat was blocking.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to clear the roadway. Put on your seat belt.”
I hit the gas, burning rubber, as the Mercedes shot backward.
Santos gawked as the car came up the ramp. He flattened himself against the wall and dropped the steel bar. The driver in the Fiat gawked at me. I could see his confusion and panic as he fumbled to get the car in reverse.
He had it into reverse when the rear of the Mercedes hit the front of the Fiat. The collision sent the Fiat flying out the ramp. The Mercedes hit it again as we burst out the exit and into the square, sending the Fiat into a wild spin.
I slammed the Mercedes into drive and took off.
Jonny stared at me, her mouth open.
“Demolition derby,” I said. “I drove in one when I was a kid. The front end of a car is fragile because that’s where the motor is, but the rear can be used as a battering ram.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I get that way when people try to kill me.”
She snuggled close to me. “I like you. I know how to pay for favors.” She reverted to English.
“I’m a guest in your house. Fucking you wouldn’t be too polite.”
She laughed. “You think we’re the Brady Bunch? João picked Simone off the street—or maybe a whorehouse. He’s not even my father—Simone got knocked up by the chauffeur. He ended up in the Boca do Ferno with cement shoes. Or maybe it was the gardener or the man who teaches her tennis. She’s fucked them all.”
I didn’t say anything. And didn’t buy into any of it. Jonny wouldn’t be the first kid to hate a parent. Hell, kids sometimes kill their makers. And vice versa. But I knew that João was up to something. My father didn’t trust him—and I suspected that Bernie had been too trusting. What I wanted was information from her, not sex.
“You want me to tell you what João’s up to, don’t you?”
I checked her out from the corner of my eye. “You into mind reading? Have some Gypsy blood?”
“You’re just too honest. I could see the conflict on your face, do you ask the kid to betray her father or—”
“You said he wasn’t your father.”
“I don’t know who he is and I don’t know what he’s up to, but whatever it is, people will lose something. Maybe even die. The father of one of my friends has a problem—he is always looking at young girls, younger than me. They say he has a sickness, the kids call it short eyes because of the size of the girls. João has the same kind of sickness.”
“He’s a pedophile?”
“No, stupid, he’s got eyes for money, even Simone says he’s sick.”
“Lots of people like money.”
“Enough to kill for it?”
“Have you ever actually seen him kill someone? Is he going to kill Santos?”
“By the time I tell João about Santos, there won’t be any Santos. The piece of shit will get out of Lisbon, maybe go hide in Spain or even Germany for a while.
Then he’ll have to pay his way back to Lisbon, give João enough money so he’ll be in a forgiving mood. If he had hurt me, the price would be his life.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Where do you think I live? In between boarding schools, I hear João on the phone, or when he has his amigos over, making deals, talking about people who back out of deals, talking like they’re dead people.”
“What’s he got planned for me?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t heard that one. But I think it has something to do with African diamonds and the fire diamond.”
“Fire diamond?”
“João’s lover, as Simone calls it. I’ve never seen it, but I hear them talk about it, a priceless diamond João’s had forever. He got into trouble last year, some deal in Africa, and had to give it to the Bey. You have some connection to the fire diamond, I’m not sure what.”
“Who’s this Bey guy?”
“Someone he makes deals with. Simone doesn’t like him. He lives in Istanbul. Sometimes João sends her there to deal with him. Maybe to fuck him.”
“You have a filthy mouth for a fifteen-year-old. Don’t you ever call your parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’?”
“They’re not my parents. I was found floating down a river in a basket. My mother was a princess who got pregnant before she got married.”
“Now I understand you.”
She gave me a questioning look.
“You’re a basket case.”
She rested her head against my shoulder and was quiet on the way home. All in all, Jonny was a thoroughly modern kid, hating her parents and all screwed up from all of the hypocrisy around her. Some kids come out the starting gate without a steady stride and never lose the wobble. Jonny was one of them, going around revved up one moment, crashing the next looking for drugs, booze, or sex to make her happy. You could pretty well imagine that she’d be that way the rest of her life. It was hard to pick up the rhythm if you didn’t have it out the gate.
23
I parked the Mercedes in the driveway and we got out. The rear end was crunched. “I’ll tell your parents about the damage in the morning. I’ll leave you out of it.”
She put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth. It was a good kiss, one of those that stirs a male’s primeval reproduction juices. Her body pressed against mine.
“Good evening.”
It was Simone. I tried to break the kiss and pry Jonny’s arms off but she hung on. Deliberately.
“Spying?” Jonny asked, finally letting go of me.
“Of course not, sweetie, I was just worried.”
“As you can see, Win got me home safely.”
“I wasn’t worried about you, dear. But Win’s in a strange country, he’s not aware of all the dangers a city like Lisbon offers.”
“If you’re that worried, maybe he should stay in a hotel.”
Jonny went into the house.
“I’m afraid your car’s damaged.” I told Simone I bumped into Jonny on the street and we went down to the parking lot together and found someone had hit-and-run, damaging the rear end. I wasn’t sure if she believed me. I figured that if Jonny wanted to tell her parents about Santos, she would.
“We can talk in the morning.”
Those were good-night words but she wasn’t saying good-bye.
“I’m sorry if Jonny has been a bother. It’s hard nowadays, for kids. I grew up with nothing, not even love, but that made me appreciate everything I got and to work harder for it. Jonny gets everything free and she appreciates nothing.”
“She’s a great kid,” I said. What else could I say? I pulled her out of a street brawl with her drug dealer and she tried to hump me on the way home? Besides, I was beginning to believe she wasn’t such a bad kid.
I could feel Simone’s heat. The woman had a natural sensuality that radiated sex. I noticed the way her clothes clung to her lush body, the way she walked across a room, her full-shaped lips, and the mounds of her breasts showing above the dress that was cut low at the neck and high at the thigh. There weren’t many women in my life that turned me on so fast. I could get aroused by any sensuous woman walking across the room but Simone had something extra, a hint of danger almost.
“She’s a little bitch. Did she tell you her father was the chauffeur? Or that she’s adopted?”
“Actually, we talked about America. She likes it.”
“You’re a liar. We sent her to an expensive girl’s school in Connecticut. She hated every minute of it. The only place she likes in America is Los Angeles, and that’s only because it’s a city of freaks. But that’s all right, you are to be commended for refusing to disclose her transgressions. Unfortunately, she will be openly discussing them at breakfast—if she gets up before noon.”
“Well, it’s getting late.”
“What did you think of João’s proposal?”
“I’m still thinking.”
“It must all be so strange to you.”
“What? African mines, blood diamonds, murderous rebel armies? No, I run into this stuff all the time back home.”
“I’ve heard you love the danger of fast cars and boats. I suppose if you have to die doing something exciting, it doesn’t make much difference if it’s in a race car or getting shot in Africa.”
I grinned. “It makes a difference to me. If I have a choice in the matter, I’d rather die in bed. And choose the woman whose arms I’m in.”
24
The night was warm, with a soft breeze. I pulled open the window, stripped, and took a hot shower. I turned off the light and lay naked on the bed, enjoying the gentle evening air on my body.
An hour had passed when I heard the knock on my door. I knew she would come. She was a woman who loved men. What I didn’t know was whether João would send her or she would come on her own. I couldn’t deny it, I was horny for her.
She dropped her silk robe at the edge of the bed and crawled on top of me. Her breasts were strong and full, her nipples rock-hard. I leaned up and sucked each succulent nipple. They smelled of rose bathwater. She got my cock between her legs. It strained frantically, already hard, pushing against her pubis, ready to enter her.
“Were you expecting Jonny?” she whispered.
“I was expecting a woman.”
I pulled her to me and kissed her hungrily.
She started down my body, teasing my nipples, sending goose bumps up my spine. She moved her tongue down my hard phallus and around my scrotum and slipped her tongue back up my stalk, moving around it like she was licking an ice cream cone.
I rolled her over and fucked her mouth with my tongue, working my way down to her mound of pubic hair. She was already wet. I took her clit and massaged it with my tongue. I felt her body start to shudder, ready to come. She gasped and let out a moan. I grasped her hips and rammed myself inside her, pumping back and forth until I exploded, her fingers digging into me, clawing my back.
We both lay spent on the bed when I sensed a shadow over us.
“Isn’t it just like you, Mother?” Jonny said. “I bring them home and you fuck them.”
I left the house in the wee hours, before the crack of dawn. I had a taxi meet me at the front gate. I didn’t leave like a thief in the night—I crawled out like a worm. I wasn’t sure why I suddenly got a dose of conscience. I hadn’t thought twice about screwing around with Hot Pants, the investment banker’s wife—but then I hadn’t been a guest in his house and broken bread with him, either.
As I thought about it on the way into Lisbon, I realized what was really bothering me. It wasn’t morality at all. Whatever was between João and Simone wasn’t true love. Hell, maybe he had sent her to hump me, softening me up for the blood-diamond deal. He wouldn’t be the first guy who used his wife’s pelt as a negotiating point. I never made a definite commitment to go through with it—but I hadn’t said no, either.
Getting honest with myself, which is no mean trick, I think Simone affected me more than I wa
nted to admit. I was attracted to Marni, she was everything I wasn’t, she had more balls than a four-hundred-pound gorilla to go into a war zone to feed people. But I lusted for Simone. The woman made my blood boil. And like those femme fatales James Cain wrote about, she kicked my good sense out from under me. It wasn’t hard to imagine Simone talking me into holding a pillow over her husband’s face while she moved a pen in his dying hand across his last will and testimony.
I reserved a seat on a flight to Angola after I called for the taxi. It wasn’t leaving until ten o’clock so I had a few hours to kill. I had the taxi drop me off at a fisherman’s marina. My father told me he spent his last night in Lisbon after the war walking along the embarcadero. I wanted to retrace his steps.
PART 4
AFRICA
25
Luanda, Angola
Wet-hot heat stinking of petro and ripe fish slapped me when I stepped out of the plane and stood at the top of the portable stairway to the tarmac in Luanda. I started melting on the spot.
“Welcome to equatorial Africa,” a grinning flight attendant said. “I hope you’ve had all your vaccinations.”
Yeah, I had shots for cholera, yellow fever, typhoid, hepatitis, TB, polio, and diseases I never heard of before. The only thing I missed was one for boredom. Not that my first impression of Luanda was a quiet boredom. The terminal was crowded with noisy, pushy people. A babble of languages, with some Portuguese thrown in, created a hum like loud radio static in a car crossing a desert. People in stunning peacock robes brushed shoulders with Africans and Europeans wearing Canali and Armani suits and carrying Gucci bags.
The majority of the people I saw were mestizos of a Portuguese-African mix. João had told me that the mestizos controlled the cities and government of the country, while the pureblood Africans were rooted in the villages and countryside. More important than a matter of race, the geo-demographics were the chemistry for the civil war that the country had engaged in for the better part of the past decade and a half. The rural people felt disenfranchised politically and economically by the powerful mestizo population. Savimbi, the rebel leader, had his main support in the countryside, controlling a large portion of it, including the diamond-mining region.
Heat of Passion Page 12