Smart Moves

by Adrian Magson

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ she twinkled. The way her dentistry lit up the foyer, she must have been very useful in a blackout.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Selecca,’ I said, going for the assumptive angle and hoping she didn’t ask me for his room number. I was taking a gamble on Selecca being a man, since all the recipients of Clayton’s envelopes had been male so far. But since this one was Mekashnik’s contact, it might well have been breaking the mould. Somehow, though, I couldn’t see Mekashnik doing business with a woman.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ the receptionist sparkled with deep sincerity, ‘but Mr Selecca has just stepped out for a while. Would you care to wait? I’m sure he won’t be long. Perhaps I can take a note of your name?’

  It was like being served by a pretty speak-your-weight machine, and just as unnerving. I gave her my name which she committed to memory before going on to suggest several nearby restaurants and bars where I could either eat or get smashed while waiting. I opted for the patio out front where I could indulge my favourite occupation and watch the world go by.

  I hadn’t eaten since I’d snatched breakfast, so I ordered a club sandwich and sank back in my chair with a cold beer, letting a cooling breeze fan my skin and the stress drain out through my feet. Since leaving Mekashnik’s place I’d had the unsettling feeling of having someone behind me, watching my every move. It had brought back memories of the follower in Nice. But Charlotte airport had proved small enough and sufficiently open to make spotting a tail easy, even for my amateur talents, and Palm Springs even more so. I told myself repeatedly that my imagination was simply working overtime after seeing the unfortunate Frank, but it didn’t help as much as I thought.

  I was just finishing my sandwich and reading a brochure extolling the wonders of the local Indian Canyons, when a shadow fell across my table. I looked up to see the receptionist smiling down at me as if I was her favoured client in all the world.

  Mr Selecca, she announced, was back and would see me now.

  After the arid heat outside, the interior was a welcome relief. I hoped my deodorant was doing its job; I didn’t want my credibility taking a nosedive because of a small hitch in bodily care. I followed the receptionist’s directions to Selecca’s suite on the first floor and knocked on the door.

  The man who opened it looked like Clark Kent. He had neat hair, heavy glasses and a conservative suit sitting on a muscular frame. He nodded and gestured me inside, somehow managing to pat me down as I passed without being in any way offensive. On the other hand, with a build like his, what was I going to do – object?

  Sitting by the window was a compact man in golf slacks and a sports shirt, who looked as if he liked the sun, although the temperature in the room was icy cold. Behind him was an impressive view of what I’d read were the San Jacinto Mountains, shrouded in a blue haze. Even from across the room I was immediately aware that the man was wearing an obscenely bad hairpiece, and wondered how I was going keep my face straight. How could someone staying in this place – and evidently well-known by the staff – let himself be topped by something that looked as if it had been scraped off the road that morning?

  ‘Mr Selecca?’ I asked, and came to a stop in front of him. The man at the door stayed in the background, hands folded across his front.

  ‘Who are you?’ Selecca stared up at me and licked his lips with a quick, darting flick of his tongue, like a lizard on a rock. His eyes were coal-black and small, giving away nothing of the man behind them.

  ‘People call me Jake,’ I said. Always a good idea to open on a genial note; it disarms the latently hostile.

  ‘Yeah, I got the name,’ he grated. ‘I meant who are you and what do you want? I’m a busy man.’

  ‘I have a delivery from Gus Mekashnik.’ As I spoke I reached into my flight bag for the package. Time to get this over and done with and hightail it back to the airport.

  ‘Don’t.’ Selecca held up a finger to stop me, and I froze.

  They say that in the presence of danger you can feel a sudden charge of energy, as if the spirits themselves are warning of something dramatic about to happen. I got a momentary fizz, but it may have been my imagination after mentioning Gus’s name and all that it implied. What was much clearer in the quietness after Selecca spoke was a snick of metal from behind me. I turned my head very slowly and found the Clark Kent lookalike holding a large automatic pistol pointing vaguely in my direction, like he wanted to use it but was reluctant in case he made a mess of the carpet.

  I shivered, not merely from the cold, and hoped I wasn’t about to make a different kind of mess.

  ‘I know Mekashnik,’ said Selecca, and flapped a restraining hand at the gunman. ‘Sorry about Paulie – he watches too many bad films where some guy comes in and says he has a delivery then pulls out a gun and starts shooting people. You want something to drink, Jake?’ He nodded towards a tray of drinks in one corner.

  Actually, after seeing Paulie’s cannon, I badly needed a pee, followed by a very large brandy. I decided to give the drink a miss and go for a hasty withdrawal before I ended up joining Frank in his celestial garden.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said politely. ‘If I can see some ID, though, I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘Oh. Okay, sure. Why not?’ He looked mildly surprised, but reached into his back pocket and produced some credit cards all in the name of D. Selecca. One of them was an Amex Platinum. ‘That do you?’

  ‘That will do nicely,’ I said. I gestured at the flight bag. ‘Can I do this?’

  He nodded, so I delved very carefully into the bag and handed over the envelope.

  He ripped it open before I could move and slid the memory stick into his palm, turning it over a couple of times like he’d never seen one before. Then he peered into the envelope as if expecting to find something else. Somewhere in the distance I heard the whoop-whoop of a police car. The atmosphere in the room went very still and quiet. I swear even the air-conditioning took a break.

  ‘What’s this?’ he asked, and looked up at me with those cold, dark eyes. He was holding up the memory stick.

  ‘It’s what I was given to bring here,’ I said, and pointed to the envelope with his name on it. ‘The envelope was sealed. That’s all I know.’ After all the deliveries I’ve done for Clayton, I thought bitterly, I have to go and make one for a third party which turns out to be not to the liking of the recipient. And he just happens to have a companion wielding a very large gun.

  Bugger.

  The police siren was getting closer, the noise seeping into the silence of the room which, until then, had been disturbed only by Selecca’s breathing and the rustle of the envelope he was scrunching up in his hand.

  ‘And he said bring it here? To me? Just that and nothing else?’ Selecca was looking annoyed. ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday. I was on my way back to the airport and he asked me if I would make this drop-off.’ I wondered how friendly Selecca and Mekashnik were, and whether this man’s next question might be where I came from. It suddenly occurred to me that if he was seriously cross, I was a long way from home and help.

  The phone gave a harsh jangle, making us all jump. I tensed, hoping Paulie’s finger wasn’t curled too closely around the trigger of his gun. Even I was aware that the statistical evidence for accidental discharges of firearms in the US was horribly high.

  ‘Yeah?’ Selecca had snatched up the phone. He listened a moment, then looked at me. ‘Sure – he’s here. Who is this?’ Then he shook his head and handed me the phone with an irate snarl. ‘What’s this, a family business? You got your sister keepin’ tabs on you? We ain’t finished, you and me, by the way, so don’t think we are.’ He tossed the balled-up envelope away from him with a flick of his wrist and waited for me to react.

  I took the phone with a sense of unreality, wondering if I was actually having a dream and any minute now I’d wake up in my bed at home, with Mrs Tree next door complaining about the increase in traffic and demanding the installation of spee
d bumps.

  I also remembered that I didn’t have a sister.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jake – get out of there!’ It was a woman’s voice, speaking low. In the background was a clatter of noise and a man’s voice issuing orders. ‘You’ve got two, maybe three minutes at most, you hear?’

  ‘Wha– who…?’ The phone went dead, leaving me with the feeling I’d heard that voice before. But where? It was a British accent… well, sort of. Like somebody trying to sound British. I forced myself to put down the receiver and smile, aware that something momentous was about to happen, although God alone knew what. All I knew was that whatever I did next had to involve leaving this room and these two very odd individuals as quickly as humanly possible. Preferably without getting shot.

  ‘My sister – Emma,’ I explained, snatching for a name. ‘She came with me for the ride. She’s a worrier, says I have to catch a flight out in the next hour. I’d better go.’

  I started towards the door and found Paulie standing in my way, his gun at waist height. Then a police siren gave a whoop right below the window, before being shut off in mid-stream. Instantly Paulie turned, the light flashing off his spectacles, jumped to the window and looked down. He cursed and looked at Selecca in a panic, the gun held down by his side.

  ‘The place is crawling with cops!’ he hissed, like someone out of a bad movie.

  I caught an expression of dawning realisation cross Selecca’s face, grabbed my bag, and was across to the door and through it before he could stop me. As I slammed the door behind me he shouted something that sounded like ‘That bastard Mekashnik!’

  Out in the corridor I followed my instincts by turning away from the reception area and heading for the emergency stairs. I had no idea what the police activity was about but, after the mystery woman’s warning on the phone, it didn’t need too much imagination to tell me that Mr Selecca and his gun-toting pal were about to get a visit from the boys in blue.

  Halfway down the corridor was an ice machine and a sweet dispenser set in a small recess. I slung my bag over my shoulder and grabbed a plastic ice bucket someone had left on the side. I filled it with cubes, then continued on my way just as the door at the end squeaked open and two men in suits appeared. Behind them was a uniformed cop. They looked like they meant business.

  I stepped aside, holding the ice bucket in front of me. They didn’t even spare me a glance, but hurried by, the uniform even holding the door for me to go through. Whoever their attention was focussed on, it evidently didn’t include guests bearing ice.

  Downstairs, another cop was standing like a statue at the rear door of the building. The no-nonsense look on his face was enough to tell me this one wasn’t going to let me go by so easy. I might be carrying an ice bucket, but he’d soon find out I wasn’t checked in. And as soon as the receptionist saw me, I’d be nailed as a visitor to Selecca’s room.

  I had no option but to go for broke and hope for the best. I turned towards the reception area where some uniforms were mingling with men in suits and a few obvious holiday guests who were looking bemused. I wandered through as casually as possible, keeping as far away from the receptionist’s megawatt smile as I could.

  Then someone grabbed me by the arm.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was Lilly-Mae.

  ‘Keep walking, Jake,’ she muttered through gritted teeth, grinning at me as if we hadn’t seen each other in months. She guided me towards the front door, chatting away excitedly about what a wonderful time we’d have on the aerial tramway and how tomorrow we could take a hot-air balloon out over the desert or maybe drive out to see the Indian Canyons. In between she batted her eyelashes until I almost believed we were actually the newly-wed couple she was pretending we were.

  Her wonderful performance took us clear of two uniforms standing in the front entrance. I wished my part could have been half as good, but I was still reeling from having Paulie pull a gun on me and trying to work out how the hell Lilly-Mae came to be there. And why.

  I placed the ice bucket on one of the outside tables as we passed, and breathed a sigh of relief when I felt the sun on my face. This was getting way too exciting. Sorting out site problems on half-built reservoirs in snake-infested jungle was a doddle compared to this.

  Five minutes later, at Lilly-Mae’s urging, we were in a Tex-Mex restaurant a few blocks down, facing each other over margaritas and a plate of nachos. Our table was conveniently placed behind a tall palm tree where she said we could keep one eye on the entrance.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be heading for the airport?’ I suggested. It seemed a wise move to me, to avoid being caught in a neighbourhood search. First rule of not being caught: run away as fast as possible.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Lilly-Mae shook her head and sank a healthy draught of margarita. She looked wonderful, as if she’d been relaxing on a beach all day instead of rescuing intrepid Englishmen from the clutches of Mafia-type gunmen. ‘We’re safe enough here, Jake.’

  ‘We are?’

  ‘Sure. Selecca won’t set the police on you. He’ll be too busy trying to worm his way out of trouble. With his record, he’ll have his work cut out.’

  ‘Having a man with a gun in his room won’t help,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Paulie, you mean? That numbnuts. Gus said he should have got rid of that moron years ago.’

  I looked at her, reminding myself that she was obviously well in with Mekashnik, and therefore would know a lot about him and people like Selecca and Paulie. I felt suddenly depressed. Why couldn’t I meet someone normal?

  ‘So how come you turned up in the nick of time?’ I asked her. ‘Thanks, by the way. You saved me from either being shot or arrested – although I’m not sure the arrest would have come in time. Not a bad British accent, either.’

  She looked modest and preened herself with a genuinely pleased smile, as if it was something she didn’t get to do too often. ‘My pleasure, Jake. Us lil’ girls have our uses, y’know.’ Then her face went sombre. ‘Gus mentioned you’d agreed to make a delivery for him here in Palm Springs, although he didn’t say where. The only person he knows here is Selecca, so I guessed that’s where you’d be headed. How come you went through with it? Didn’t you find Frank?’

  ‘You know about him?’ I felt a chill go down my back. I’d been hoping she wasn’t involved in the gardener’s demise. Was I sitting there with a ruthless killer?

  She nodded, then shook her head, confused. ‘Yes, I knew something had happened to him, but not what, exactly. It was all a blur, y’know.’ She shivered and finished her drink, and I ordered refills. By the pallor which had invaded her face, I could tell that events of the last day or so had suddenly caught up with her.

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked, Uncle Jake the psychologist at work; a problem shared is a problem pushed onto someone else, according to my dear old mum.

  ‘A few hours after you went to the hotel – it must have been about two in the morning – Gus came in saying there were intruders in the trees behind the house. He saw their flashlights or something. Anyway, he went ape-shit and got his rifle, and went downstairs to get Frank. I stayed in my room. There was a lot of shouting, then a shot followed by a splash from out back. I figured someone took a fall in the pool, but I couldn’t see because my room’s at the front. Next thing, Gus comes back upstairs and tells me Frank got shot and to grab my things and get ready to bail out.’

  ‘What about his two goons?’

  ‘Jesse and Dino? They don’t stay in the house. They live a few miles away. Gus said there wasn’t time to call them, but I don’t think they’d have been any help, anyway. Gus has known them for years. They’re more like buddies than employees.’

  ‘And where is Gus now?’

  She looked back at me for a moment, then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He took me to another house he owns outside Charlotte, then blew town. He said he had something to attend to and I was to wait there for him to get back. But I figured if whoever it was who was mad a
t him had tracked him down and killed Frank, they could soon find out where I was, too. Better I should leave town until things calmed down. Then I remembered you, so better than waiting there, I came to Palm Springs.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t figured that part out. To stop you getting caught up in it any further, I guess.’ She stared back at me with a faint frown. ‘You seemed to me like a nice guy who didn’t deserve it. And besides, it gave me something to do which was a whole lot better than sitting on my tush waiting to hear from Gus.’

  It was all a million miles from anything I was accustomed to, and I wondered what Clayton would make of it. It reminded me that maybe I should call him and let him know that his legitimate businessman had slipped over to the dark side. ‘Do you know who the intruders were?’

  ‘Gus said they were sent by some people he’d had some dealings with. A dispute of some kind – over money, I figured. I asked him what kind of dispute ends in shooting, but he wouldn’t say.’ She shook her head and took a sip of her fresh drink when it arrived. ‘Gus can be such an asshole.’

  She was right; ordinary commercial disputes don’t end in people being shot.

  ‘What kind of business is he in?’ I asked. I knew, of course, since Clayton had told me, but I wondered how involved Lilly-Mae was. There was a large part of me hoping she hadn’t a clue, but since she lived in the same house and didn’t appear to be mentally retarded or deaf, she had to know something.

  She gave me an odd look, as if I was kidding her along. ‘You don’t know? You must know.’

  ‘I don’t. Why should I?’