A Sudden Death in Cyprus

by Michael Grant

  Out of nowhere: Baldy!

  He was to my right, charging toward me. How the hell? He was coming straight down a row of chaise longues, leaping them like he was running the one-hundred-ten-meter hurdles at the Olympics. He would cut me off before I reached the rocks.

  My God, he was fast!

  But I was desperate. I reached, grabbed the back skin of a tabby, and threw the cat at Baldy. It was a lucky throw and a quick cat. Tabby had all four paws and however many claws stretched horizontally as flying kitty met bearded Russian face.

  Baldy let go a satisfyingly soprano howl and spun away as the cat hissed and slashed and dug stiletto claws into scalp and forehead and eyes.

  I topped the low concrete sea wall and hurled myself onto the nearest rock. It was slick and I tripped, landed on my cut shin and caught myself with my cut hand and sprang away like a one-legged frog.

  A hand closed around my ankle stopping my momentum dead and bringing me down hard. Any air left in my lungs exploded outward in a sob. I rolled and that loosened Bristle’s grip. I fell into a wet crevice not two feet wide, a surge of foam covered me, I sucked water and crawled. Crawled and scraped and slithered and kicked until suddenly, I plunged.

  Chilly water closed over my head. My back touched bottom, and I let myself slide further until I could bend my knees and propel myself away though the water.

  And then I swam. My form was not all it might have been, but my motivation was strong. I swept my arms and kicked my legs and the goddamn swell pushed me back, but not hard enough, not hard enough to defeat my adrenal glands.

  I swam and swam and finally, panting and gasping, looked back. I saw two things. Thing one was the two Russians standing on a rock as foam covered their shoes.

  Thing two was flashing police lights on the road, which was just two hundred yards behind them.

  Bristle stabbed a finger toward me and yelled something in Russian. Probably not, ‘Have a nice day.’

  I swam down the beach for a quarter mile. Then finally I dragged my wet, cut-stinging, utterly-exhausted body up and out onto rocks. I lay there breathing up at the moon as the shakes took me.

  I managed to stand after a while, but it was a near-run thing. I walked on numb feet, feeling the pain of cuts, feeling battered muscles and twisted tendons, fighting the languidness that even mild Mediterranean water brings. My goal, insofar as I had a coherent thought, was to stagger as far as any open business with lights on. But I didn’t make it that far. Instead I made it only as far as the idling Kia pulled onto the grass verge.

  Special Agent Delia Delacorte was behind the wheel. I could see her in the dashboard light.

  She reached over and pushed open the passenger door.

  I collapsed onto the seat, draining seawater and rivulets of blood.

  She didn’t ask anything, just raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I …’ Sigh. ‘I went out for a smoke.’ And then the lights went out and my head fell back and I went bye-bye.

  SIXTEEN

  I pried open an eye and saw we were driving.

  And went away again, drifting away on sweet, sweet lethargy.

  I pried open an eye again when I heard a female voice insisting, ‘I can’t carry you, you’re going to have to help.’

  I caused my arms and legs to sort of move, a random flailing that somehow ended with me standing, leaning back against Delia’s car with her hand on my chest keeping me up.

  ‘Blood all over my favorite top,’ Delia complained, ‘and there aren’t a lot of shops selling clothes for six-foot-tall women here.’

  My bleary eyes noted with surprise that we were at my villa.

  ‘Give me your keys.’

  ‘They’ll follow us,’ I gasped.

  I did my best, but my hand and arm had disagreements about how to accomplish the retrieval of keys, so she finally fished in my slacks pocket and I swear that despite everything there was a bit of an erotic thrill.

  She half dragged me inside and dumped me on my couch where I sat played-out and splayed-out like a drunk, legs wide, arms flopped.

  ‘Locks!’ I said forcefully. Or may have whimpered.

  I heard the faraway sound of a deadbolt being thrown. Then a puzzling sound, which I took to be furniture dragged over tile. Delia was gone for a minute or two during which time I remembered once being at my great-grandmother’s house and sitting on a plastic-covered sofa. I wondered confusedly if that had been to deal with blood, because my sofa was done for.

  Then Delia was back holding something to my mouth and the happy, malty aroma of the Isle of Skye rose in my nostrils to give me hope. I swallowed a mouthful of whiskey and it burned. It burned so wonderfully.

  I noticed that Delia had stuck a knife in her belt, my chef’s knife, very swashbuckling.

  By then I was able to stand and say intelligent things like, ‘I’m bleeding. Fuck. Maid service will …’

  She led me upstairs to my bedroom, thence to the master bath, where she sat me on the tile floor of the shower and turned on hot water.

  I sat there soaking up life-giving heat, with most of a freshened tumbler of Talisker, watching the blood come out of my hand and leg and armpit. After a long time, I found enough strength to stand up and remove my wet and clinging clothing, wincing at my wounds.

  In movies, tough guys just shake off deadly encounters. In real life, those things leave you stunned, scared, shaking and needing to metabolize way too much hormonal go-juice. Add chilly water and sudden desperate exertion and there comes a lethargic state bordering on coma.

  I turned off the shower and went to the medicine cabinet in search of my first-aid supplies, which I dropped with a clatter.

  Delia came in, snatched up as many towels as she could in one hand, took my wrist and guided me back into the bedroom. She spread a towel over the side of the bed and sat me down.

  I’d had hopes of being naked with Delia at some point, but I was not presenting as favorably as I’d have liked. I was a drowned rat, hair in my eyes, shoulders sagging toward vertical, sand in my chest hair, draining out the red red kroovy, and acutely aware that terror and the Mediterranean had left me looking somewhat less than awe-inspiring.

  She went to work with my supply of first aid, augmenting where necessary with towels.

  ‘You need a gun,’ I said. ‘The bastards could try for a do-over.’

  ‘David, I have secured the doors and windows. They aren’t going to try again tonight, they’ve got cops to deal with. Besides,’ she said, with a nicely ironic tone, ‘you’re in the safe embrace of the FBI.’

  ‘Comforting, frightening and a bit erotic,’ I said.

  ‘The leg will be OK,’ she muttered. ‘Raise your arm.’

  I did, revealing the two opposite cuts, one on the underside of my bicep, the other on my side, blood running down and making delta patterns on my skin.

  ‘You need stitches,’ she said. ‘Shall I take you to the hospital?’

  Not a firm ‘I’m taking you to the hospital,’ but a diffident, ‘shall I take you?’ Question mark.

  After terror, pain and lethargy comes anger. ‘I fucking told you!’

  ‘Yes.’ Our eyes met. ‘I saw them out the window. I saw them follow you. I came as fast as I could.’

  ‘Jesus Fucking Christ, I’m on a Russian mob hit list.’

  You’ve been bitten by a deadly viper and there is no antidote.

  You’ve got end-stage pancreatic cancer.

  You’re on a Russian mob hit list.

  Delia nodded. ‘Looks like it.’

  It’s hard to argue when people agree.

  ‘I can sew you up,’ Delia said. ‘Do you have a sewing kit?’

  ‘I have one of those kits they give you at decent hotels,’ I snarled. I told her where to find it.

  ‘Any color preference in thread? We have red, white, blue—’

  ‘Basic black will be fine.’

  She borrowed my cigar torch to sterilize the needle, then threaded it. ‘This might hurt.�
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  ‘It’s going to hurt like hell, Delia, and I’m going to be a baby about it.’

  ‘More Scotch?’

  Of course more Scotch, you crazy, reckless bitch, who almost got me killed and still may. I’ll take a syringe of heroin, if you have any. I did not say.

  I confined myself to sarcasm. ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  It hurt.

  Alcohol doesn’t make pain go away, it just makes you care less. You read stories about warriors – Vikings, Huns, Mongols, Marines – who never so much as whimper while they have a leg cut off with a pair of snub-nosed kindergarten craft scissors, but I am none of those things. The best I could manage was a string of curses accompanied by flinches, cringes and sudden intakes of breath.

  But at last I was sewed, smeared with antiseptic cream, bandaged and even dressed in underpants and a T-shirt.

  Delia filled a baggie with ice and pressed it against my jaw where Bristle had punched me.

  The lethargy, much aided by the whiskey, returned, all anger and bitterness had seeped out of me. Along with enough blood to make me woozy.

  ‘You okay?’ Delia asked me. Gentle. Concerned. Like she was Mommy.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll … I’m just going to …’

  She pushed me back on the bed. Pulled the covers from beneath me then spread them over me. I don’t think she really gave me a kiss on the forehead, I probably just imagined that.

  I probably also imagined drunkenly slurring the opening lick of ‘Bad to the Bone’.

  Then I slept.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Black, right?’

  My nose worked, and I smelled that most magical of all aromas. Someone had super glued my eyes shut so it was with difficulty that I pried one open.

  Delia sat on the edge of my bed and held a mug toward me.

  ‘Black and bitter, just the way I like my women,’ I said, attempting a sexy leer which was perhaps less effective than it might have been had the side of my jaw not been swollen.

  ‘I could just pour this coffee over your head.’

  I took the mug. I drank. And the life-giving elixir flowed into me.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Delia asked.

  I took stock. Pain. Pain. Pain there, too. And there. Humiliation. Shame. Self-loathing. And a probably false memory of having yelled that I had Tourette’s of the hand. That couldn’t be right.

  ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘I’ll have scrambled eggs with chives and crème fraîche. A well-browned banger, toast, butter and marmalade. And some melon – don’t cut too close to the rind.’

  ‘Right,’ Delia said and left.

  I stumbled to the shower, did an ineffectual keep-the-bandages dry dance as I parboiled myself clean again, sprayed deodorant, replaced my sopping wet bandages, practically weeping at the sight of neat black stitches, and dressed. I found Delia in the living room. There was toast on the kitchen counter.

  Just toast.

  I snagged the toast, freshened my coffee and sat opposite her. She’d used my guest room shower and dressed in some of my clothes – pale blue dress shirt with French cuffs rolled up to just below the elbows – rather fetching – and black sweatpants – rather not.

  ‘Did you check your wounds for pus or reddening?’ she asked.

  ‘That is a question I’ve never before been asked. But no, no pus. No sign of infection. And your stitches were fairly even.’ I sipped coffee and crunched toast. ‘I didn’t exactly pull off the role of stoic action hero last night, did I?’

  I meant it as a self-deprecating joke and expected a condescending laugh.

  ‘Actually, despite realizing that this will just inflate your oversized ego,’ Delia said seriously, ‘I have to say you did really well.’

  I shook my head. ‘Joe Burton would not have whined and whimpered and then cried himself to sleep.’

  Damn she had a great smile, lots of teeth beneath amused-yet-skeptical eyes.

  You’re trying not to like me, Delia, but you do. You can’t help yourself. I’m charming, smart, tall, good-looking and a (mostly) reformed sociopath, what’s not to like? I did not say.

  What I did say was: ‘So. You going to tell me why this case is so important to you?’

  ‘So important?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, because here’s the thing I realized at some point in the night, in between nightmares of being in a wet coffin full of knives. This is about the kids for you. Emotionally, I mean. Sure, money-laundering Russians, but if that was the main focus Agent Kim would still be here, wouldn’t he? Feebs travel in pairs. So, something went wrong with the money-laundering case and the agency called you home to Rome. Kim went. You came up with some bullshit involving vacation time.’

  She digested that for a few minutes and I glanced surreptitiously around, noting the chair under the front door with some approval. Noting that she’d driven a nail into the tile to lock it in place, with even stronger approval.

  One eyebrow cocked upward for a full second. She shook her head slightly, arguing with herself. Then a slight snort of laughter, not amusement, more the sound you might make on realizing you’re screwed and have no choice but to go along.

  ‘You know, David, I’ve read your books,’ she said. ‘All of them. You’re better at avoiding clichés than real life is.’

  ‘What’s the cliché?’

  ‘The one about every cop having a case they can’t let go of?’

  ‘The cold case trope. Sure. Michael Connelly does it with Bosch. James Lee Burke. Mosley. Lehane. Fucking Lee Child. Milking the backstory.’

  ‘If you say so. Anyway, a few years ago I was working out of Palermo. Sicily. We were providing technical assistance to the Italian carabinieri dealing with the Sicilian mafia.’

  Already I was not enjoying this story. Were we adding Sicilian Mafia to the equation, now? What was keeping the Yakuza, Murder Inc., and the goddamned Uruk-hai?

  ‘So, while I was on Sicily, there was a big run of refugees coming from North Africa, and we knew the mob would look to cash in if they could. So we thought: opportunity!’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Who doesn’t get excited at the prospect of picking a fight with the Mafia? In Sicily, no less.’

  ‘It turned out, unsurprisingly, that they were taxing the smugglers. So much per boat, so much per head. In exchange, the mob made sure the carabinieri were never at the landing place.’

  ‘I thought you were working with the carabinieri?’

  ‘Come on, David, why do you think the Italian government called us in? They knew the carabinieri in Sicily were riddled with mafia informers. Anyway, the old men in Palermo are very good at accounting, and they’d began to realize that the number of refugees arriving and being taxed were fewer than the number departing North Africa. So, they questioned some of the smugglers …’

  ‘Politely, I’m sure.’

  ‘Ever hear of a mob enforcer nicknamed “Szell?” He was a loaner from the Philly mob, they wanted someone they could trust but who would absolutely have no ties to the Italian authorities. Treason goes both ways.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound very Sicilian, “Szell.”’

  ‘Real name is Turturici. He took the name Szell from that old movie, The Marathon Man? The one where the Nazi dentist uses a drill to—’

  ‘Ah, ah, ah! Stop, stop, stop! I saw the movie, all right? Jesus Christ.’

  ‘So, as you might guess, the smugglers gave up what they knew, and did it in a hurry. It seems there was another organization with their fingers in the pie. See, a hundred refugees might leave in a boat, but out at sea they would run into a patrol boat mocked up to look like an official Guardia Costiera patrol boat. Uniformed crew, the whole deal.’

  I liked the ease with which she trilled the Italian ‘r’s in Guardia Costiera.

  Not important.

  ‘Obviously it was a set-up. The smugglers would take on, say, a hundred people in Libya, charging on average six thousand dollars. They are
“intercepted” at sea where the fake coast guardsmen would simply seize whatever children were present under the pretense of saving them from the perils of the sea. Occasionally they would also take a woman. Always a young woman.’ She made a world-weary smirk that turned sour. ‘The smugglers don’t mind: they’ve been paid for a hundred passengers, who cares if only ninety reach the destination? If any of them makes too much of a fuss about the kids, well, smugglers don’t have a lot of patience. So, the remaining refugees reach Sicily where Italian authorities are overwhelmed. The refugees ask after their children and are told it will all be cleared up. With families spread around various camps, various countries, some getting in, some not, the lost kids are never quite found.’

  ‘How many in a year?’ I asked. ‘Follow the money.’

  ‘Over just the last fifty-three months my guess is about five hundred kids.’

  ‘Five million, round numbers, if we use the ten-grand figure. Realistically maybe half that or a bit over.’ That, I thought, just might be enough to justify the risk. Call it three million over not quite five years? Six hundred grand a year? Maybe. But my instincts told me there was more going on. Six hundred large is nice money, but a single successful heroin run would earn much more with lower risk.

  ‘You think it’s not enough,’ Delia said, reading my expression. ‘It takes a thief, as they say.’

  ‘Hey,’ I snapped, because I was not having that, not for a second. I risked a finger pointing it at her. She didn’t break it off. ‘I stole money, Delia. Stole money, past tense. I never fucking sold children. Don’t ever equate me to those people.’

  She took that in and in what I believe is a first for any FBI agent since J. Edgar Hoover was posing with a tommy gun, she said, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘So, what’s the rest?’

  ‘What do you think it is?’ She challenged me.

  My turn to think. It took a minute. Chills went up my spine. ‘They ransom them back to the parents. Charge them for passage out, grab them and sell them as sex toys, and when they’re used up, they sell them back to the family. For?’