by Paul Moomaw
“Uneventful.”
“That’s the best kind, no?”
“Always.”
Bermudez bent down behind the desk and pulled out a black valise that could have been the twin of Gotard’s. In the other hand he held a nickel-plated revolver. He placed both on the desk.
“A lot of guns around here,” Gotard said.
“Are you surprised?”
Gotard shook his head. “No,” he said.
“You have any trouble coming up with the cash?”
“I asked my boss for an advance.” Always say something true, he thought. He had never trusted his voice when he lied. Even as a child, learning the hard lessons of Marseilles alleys, his mother could always catch him, which meant a beating until he finally grew too big, and one day she threw a skillet at him instead, and he walked out and stayed gone for two weeks. They had lived together in an uneasy truce from that point until she died.
“Hand it over,” Bermudez said. “And I’ll give you this.” He patted the valise on the desk. “Then we can relax, and enjoy our drinks, and tell lies about all the women we have screwed.”
“I have to see what’s inside there first,” Gotard said.” You can understand.”
“Sure, mano, I can understand.” Bermudez opened the valise and withdrew a plastic bag filled with white powder. “Try a little.” The bag was closed with a wire tie. Gotard opened it and spread a generous pinch onto the top of his left hand. He licked the fingers of his right hand and nodded at the bitter taste, then inhaled the powder from the top of his other hand through his nostrils with a long, noisy whuffle. He felt the impact of the drug almost immediately.
“Good stuff,” he said, closing the bag and tossing it back to Bermudez. As the other man busied himself returning the cocaine to the valise, Gotard sprang to his feet. He swung his own valise in a large arc, with all the energy he could find, into the side of Bermudez’ head. The impact lifted the Colombian from his chair and threw him to the floor. He lay there, conscious but with his eyes crossing in their effort to focus.
Gotard grinned. “Bricks,” he said. He placed the valise gently on the carpet, then bent over Bermudez and grabbed his hair with his left hand, while his right dipped into a pocket and withdrew a switchblade. He flicked the knife open, jerked the other man’s head back, and cut his throat, then let him drop. He picked up the revolver and the valise filled with cocaine and strode to the door. It was locked on the inside, too. He returned to the desk and pawed around its edges until he found the button that controlled the door. He pressed the button and lunged for the door, but it locked itself before he could get it open.
“Merde!” He returned to the desk and crouched, ready to launch himself at the door. He pressed the button and leaped. The buzzer sounded, the latch clicked, and then he was crashing painfully against the edge of the door, which someone had opened from the outside. He staggered back. The crewman who had let him aboard stood there, eyes widening as he saw Bermudez.
Gotard shot him in the face. The revolver was a heavy caliber, and sounded like the end of the world. He pushed past the crewman, then turned and shot him again, in the back of the head. He stepped out on deck and looked around, but saw no one. Then he heard a squeak and whirled. Another man raced up the stairs at him. He fired once, and the man fell back down the stairs, a surprised look on his face. Gotard stepped past him and went below. He found a small cabin, and beyond that, the engine compartment. Both were empty. He returned to the deck, checking on the second crewman to make sure he was dead. Then he went back to the main cabin and retrieved his brick-filled valise. He stepped outside again, walked to the railing, and started to throw the valise overboard. Then he stopped, suddenly confused.
“No sense doing something stupid at this point,” he said, and opened the bag to make sure it was the right one. Bricks. He closed it again and heaved it into the water. Then he climbed back into his power boat, cut the line, and started the engine.
“A nice day’s work,” he said. He stroked the valise full of cocaine, then shifted into drive and pulled away from the motor launch, full throttle.
Chapter 24
Adam Pray came awake all at once. The glowing face of his watch said ten after five. Lydia lay curled against him, her soft arm thrown over his chest. Pray wanted not to wake her up. He did not do good-byes well. The trick now was to get out of her grasp, dressed, and out of the house without disturbing her dreams. The Army had trained him in escape and evasion techniques that he had never needed in Vietnam. He doubted they would be of much use now, either.
Then he remembered the hand trick. Years before a friend had hypnotized him, and he had watched, befuddled, as his hand drifted into the air, apparently of its own volition. Later, his friend had explained that he had actually raised the hand.
“But while I’m lifting, I’m pressing it all over with my fingertips, sometimes on top, sometimes on the bottom, or the sides, and any sensation of being tugged upwards gets lost.”
Pray wondered if he could turn the hand trick into an arm trick, even a whole body trick. Lydia made the question more interesting by snuggling closer. He rolled toward her, and let his shoulder lever the arm she had around him, so that she rolled as well, and came to rest half on her side, half on her back. He lifted the arm free, moving it gently, and nuzzled her check with his nose and chin at the same time. Lydia smiled and sighed, and rolled the rest of the way onto her back. He squeezed the arm, wrist and hand in what he hoped was an effectively random pattern, and let go. As he pulled his own arm back, the inside of his wrist brushed against one of her nipples, which had popped up hard. The contact felt like brushing against an active electrode. At the same time he caught a whiff of her perfume.
The real trick may be making myself get out of bed, he thought. He rolled slowly away from her, his penis a tall ghost following the rest of him in fits and starts as it hung up under the sheet. He edged closer to the side of the bed, slid one leg out, and got a foot onto the floor.
Then Lydia was on top of him, eyes wide open, grinning.
“Where are you going?” She bit him lightly on the chin, reached down and stroked his scrotum.
“Nowhere,” Pray said.
“Nowhere?”
“Maybe in there?” He coiled a finger in the wiry hair around her vagina.
“Fine,” She straddled him, sitting erect on her knees, so that her breasts and their dark nipples framed her face, and guided him into her. “I think I just have room enough,” she said, and Pray decided there might be worse things than good-byes.
Afterwards, his watch said it was almost six o’clock. Sorry to screw and run, he thought, and managed to say, “I guess..”
“You have to leave,” Lydia said. “I could tell without even opening my eyes. I could feel you pull away from me, inside, even though your body didn’t move.”
“Very perceptive.”
She rolled off, propped herself up on her elbows, and gazed at him. “I am a witch, remember? Anywhere you go, anything you do, I will know. Always.”
She lay on her back, hands wrapped behind her head, and watched him dress. Every time he looked back at her, she jiggled her breasts and grinned.
“Testing my willpower?” he asked. “Or putting a hex on me with your magic wands?”
She nodded toward his crotch. “That is the magic wand.”
“More a tired sausage now.”
“I can fix that.”
He shook his head, slipped into his shirt, and began to button it. “I have a bus to catch.”
She sighed loudly and pulled the sheet over her face. “Then I must die,” she said through the cloth.
Pray laughed and started to step into his pants. He was perched on one foot when someone hammered on the front door with slow, loud blows, yelling in Greek. Lydia jerked the sheet down and sat up with a frown.
“Andreas,” she said. She pushed herself out of bed, picked up the yellow terry cloth robe she had left crumpled on the rug, and pull
ed it over her shoulders, not putting her arms through the sleeves. She glanced with a grin at Pray, who still balanced on one foot. “Maybe he has come to take you to the bus.”
Pray finished putting his trousers on, and grabbed his socks and shoes. He was tying a lace when Andreas strode in, his face twisted in an ugly sneer, Lydia following him and slapping at his back.
“This is my room,” she said in English. “Get out!”
“Sure,” Andreas replied, also in English. “And of course Kyrios Pray will also want to leave, so you can get dressed in private. I know how modest you are.”
Lydia offered him an obscene gesture and turned away.
“My sister has gotten bad,” she said to Pray as she stepped into a pair of jeans, then removed the robe and pulled on a dark, loose fitting turtleneck. “I have to go see her.”
“Should I come with?”
She shook her head. “It will be better if you don’t, I think. This one,” and she jerked her head toward Andreas, “is looking for excuses to make trouble.” She glanced at herself in the mirror, fluffed her hair with her fingers, and stepped toward the door.
As Pray started to follow, Andreas blocked his path.
“You don’t need to go anywhere.”
“You would be smart to get out of my way,” Pray said.
“I am not afraid of you,” Andreas said, and folded his arms over his chest. But his jaw trembled, and he blinked repeatedly.
Pray shot his right hand up and out, and brought the heel of it down sharply against Andreas’ forehead, just above the nose. The younger man’s head snapped back, and Pray pushed him almost gently to one side.
“A piece of advice,” he said. “Don’t cross your arms when you’re looking for a fight. You might as well tie yourself up with a rope.” He stepped outside the house.
The Skevis brothers, Minas and Antoni, lounged a couple of meters from the front door. Minas held a wooden club. Pray paused. Antoni smiled and beckoned to Pray with his finger.
Pray shook his head. “No thank you,” he said. Suddenly he was flying head first into the street, skidding on rough stone that lacerated his hands and knees. He tucked his head and rolled, and managed to come to his feet, then looked behind him. Andreas laughed and sauntered out of the doorway behind him.
Pray started to rise. Antoni kicked at his head. Pray deflected the blow and grabbed the other man’s ankle, then speared his bladder with the pointed knuckle of his center finger. Antoni squealed and staggered back. Minas advanced, swinging the club. Pray rolled to one side, and as the weapon crashed into the spot where he had been, he spun on his hands and sent Minas to the street with a kick into the side of his knee.
Pray scrambled to his feet and turned back to Antoni, who no longer stood empty-handed, but held a monster of an old Webley service revolver, with a muzzle that looked like the maw of hell. He pointed it at Pray’s belly button.
Andreas went to Minas and helped him to his feet. Arm in arm, they began a three-legged hobble down the street. Antoni motioned with the revolver for Pray to follow, then fell in behind him.
They had walked about five meters when a dark gray Fiat pulled around a corner and headed in their direction. Antoni tugged at Pray’s collar, and guided him toward a whitewashed wall.
“Do not do anything at all,” he said. He stepped to Pray’s side and pressed the muzzle of the gun into his ribs.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Pray said.
The Fiat drew closer, slowing down as it came, its tires crunching bits of gravel in the street. As it reached the men, it stopped, and the driver’s window slid down with a noisy squeak. Agamemnon Londos sat behind the wheel.
Antoni muttered something that sounded like a curse, and then the Webley was no longer nuzzling Pray’s side.
Londos smiled at Pray. “Need a ride?” he asked.
Pray walked around to the other side of the car.
“It was nice chatting with you,” he said to the others, and climbed inside. Londos put the Fiat in gear and they began to move forward. “You look a little scuffed up,” he said.
Pray examined himself. Blood seeped from the palms of his hands, and one knee of his pants hung in a loose flap. “I think I need to change clothes,” he said. “Shit!”
“What?”
“I was about to forget my suitcase.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
“Why do I think you already know that?”
Londos laughed. “Because you’re so smart.” At the next intersection, he wheeled the Fiat around and headed back the way they had come. “We’ll get your bag, and then I’ll take you to the Gorge. That’s where you’re headed, right? We can talk.”
“I can take the bus,” Pray said.
Londos did not reply.
“I don’t want to talk,” Pray said. “I don’t have anything to talk about.”
“That’s okay.” The Fiat pulled up in front of Lydia’s house. “I can do all the talking. Go get your suitcase.”
Chapter 25
Andreas glowered at Antoni Skevis.
“Why did you let him go?” he asked.
“What was I supposed to do instead?”
“You could have ignored the bastard in the car.” Andreas sailed a flat piece of rock from the jetty with an underhand toss. It hit the water and sank immediately. “Shit!” He turned back to Skevis. “You had the gun. The American would have kept his mouth shut.”
Minas Skevis stretched an arm across his brother to Andreas, a pack of Karelia cigarettes in his hand. “Here,” he said. “Stick one of these in your mouth to keep it shut.” He lighted one for himself. “You’re too impatient.”
“And that guy in the car was big police of some kind,” Antoni said. “I saw him at the station. He was leaving, and he got a salute.”
“Wonderful,” Andreas said. “You don’t think the American told him what we did, in that case.”
Antoni shrugged. “If he did, he did. We can deal with that if it comes to it.”
“And I bet he did not,” Minas said. “He likes to think he is tough. A real hard case. His type would be embarrassed to cry to the police.”
“In the meantime, he’s gone,” Andreas said.
“Be happy,” Antoni said. “Now you can go back to your little piece.” He laughed. “If you don’t mind leftovers.”
Andreas pitched his cigarette at Antoni’s face, then tackled him around the chest and forced him to the rock. “Dog shit! I’ll give you leftovers.” He hit Antoni in the mouth, and cocked his fist back to strike again. Antoni grabbed him suddenly around the nape of the neck and jerked his head down, butting his forehead into Andreas’ left eye with a sound like a soccer ball hitting a stomach. Andreas cried out in pain and grabbed at his face, and then Antoni was on top of him, choking him.
Minas limped to the scuffling pair, pulled his cigarette from between his lips, and pressed it with slow deliberation against the back of his brother’s neck. Antoni yelped and let go of Andreas, and Minas pushed him onto his back. Then, as Andreas struggled to go after Antoni, Minas backhanded him and sent him sprawling.
“Save your courage for when the American returns,” he said. He sat down again, landing heavily and grabbing his knee. “Bastard nearly broke my leg,” he muttered.
“Maybe he’ll take it all the way off,” Andreas said. He stood, still holding his eye. “If he comes back at all.”
“He will,” Minas said. “In the meantime, here is what we must do. Leave town for a few days, and have our father find out if the police are after us. I think the answer to that will be no. Then we wait for the American to return. Our little guest room,” he nodded toward the half-submerged tanker, “will still be there.”
“And how the hell will we get him there?” Andreas asked. “He won’t come within a kilometer of any of us again. He’s no fool, even if he is an American.”
Minas nodded. “You have a point.” Then he smiled. “But he would go anywhere your little Lydia asked him to,
I bet.”
“I don’t want to get her involved,” Andreas said.
“Still trying to get on her good side?”
Andreas shrugged. “Maybe.”
“And don’t you think having money, a lot of money, might help?”
“She won’t do shit for us, anyway,” Minas said. “She wants to lick the American’s cock, not watch it get cut off.” He smiled slyly at Andreas, who clenched his fists but held his silence.
“Shut up,” Minas said.
“But your pussy-mouth brother is right,” Andreas said. “Lydia won’t help out.”
“She will if she doesn’t know she is,” Minas said. “We can figure that part out with the time comes. Until then I think your job is to make her smile at you again.”
“How do I do that?”
“That’s your problem.” Minas grabbed his brother’s arm and began to lead him away from the end of the jetty. “Maybe you’ll have to ask her forgiveness.”
Antoni looked over his shoulder and sneered. “Crawl for her,” he said, and laughed loudly.
Andreas watched the two men go, frowning. “It doesn’t feel right,” he said. He turned back to the sea, picked up another rock, and sent it over the water in a low arc. It hit the surface and sank. He shot his middle finger toward the spot where the stone had disappeared, wheeled around, and marched toward the shore. How the hell was he supposed to pull off a kidnapping, when he couldn’t even skip a rock?
Chapter 26
Homer the rat, who did not answer to that name, and was in fact female, crouched under a chair in the galley of Julian Pray’s ketch, the Broken Wing. A large, human female stood at the other end of the galley with a skillet in her hand. Homer had no name for the skillet, nor any awareness of the gender she shared with the one who held it; but the woman represented a combination of size, shape and odor which, for Homer, spelled peril. She crouched in a corner, across an expanse of open, dangerous floor from her bolt hole, eyes glinting and whiskers quivering. She held a large, salty nut delicately between her teeth, and had another tucked in her cheek—the meager fruits of a long period of searching. Food had become a problem ever since this new human had appeared. Nuts, crusts of bread, and containers of other foods had been plentiful before. Now the woman beat Homer to almost everything, and the rat felt hunger frequently.