One Step to Danger

by John Gubert

  By then we had finished our meal. It was getting late and the restaurant had emptied quite quickly. The waiters were starting to hover by our table. All the world over, they do that. It’s a polite way to say that the time has come for them to get their tip. They have weighed up the possibilities. They don’t see it getting any bigger if they allow you to stay longer.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “That is unless you want a coffee? I know you are going to keep clear of those sweets. I would have had one if you had not shamed me earlier. I’ll just have to starve then and be weakened by my sugar deficiency.”

  “Poor boy,” laughed Jacqui. “Get the bill. We have work to do.”

  I paid the bill and gave a generous tip. The smiles were genuine now. We had gone early and paid well. The smiles were of success rather than gratitude. But that’s the best you can get in places like that.

  We walked out. Jacqui was wearing a tight short black skirt, with a small slit up the back and topped by a patent leather belt that matched her shoes to perfection. Her perfectly shaped legs were covered in sheer honey coloured tights. They tapered into that pair of black shoes, simple, delicate and yet elegant. She had a plain black top, with a round neck, gently cut but tight enough to reveal her superb figure. A gold choker topped this ensemble. The contrast was superb. Her flawless face and neck surrounded by that mane of black hair blended with the outfit. A mixture of textures, varied yet co-ordinated. Fully dressed, yet as she walked through that dining room, it appeared otherwise. I could see every inch of her body through that ensemble. Others tried to undress her and imagine what she was like. Only I was aware that the perfection was a reality. She was beautiful.

  We got back to the room. It was approaching eleven. I handed her the phone. She called the number. I could see she was apprehensive. She frowned slightly and licked her lips time and again.

  The phone rang. It rang again. It rang a third time before it was answered. I could not hear who was on the other line, but Jacqui said, “I’ll wait.”

  She turned to me and explained “He’s having dinner with some business friends. They are going to tell him I’m there.”

  Someone came to the phone. “Hello Daddy,” she said. “How are you?”

  Again there was a comment down the phone. “Daddy, we need to talk. In case you don’t know. Maria Angelica and Claudio Pasquale have both had an unfortunate accident. Their car fell off a cliff in the South of France in a storm. They were killed. Luckily though they were not drowned. They already had a few holes in them and so did not feel anything.”

  She laughed, “No, he doesn’t want to work for you. We did not appreciate them. We don’t appreciate the fact that you sent others to chase us. We did not mean them to get killed. Look you have now lost six people and your brother and his son also failed in their clumsy attempt. By the way I would retire them. They are a liability. They were so stupid and careless. It was unbelievable.”

  She added. “We need to meet. I have my own life to live. I am going to prove that I am a real Di Maglio. I want us to talk of my plan. I have joined up with some friends. We are going to amass a fortune. Within a year we are targeting several billion dollars. If we do that, we will consider joining forces with you at that point. But there will be conditions. And they will include legitimising our activities. Can we talk?”

  Again there was comment down the phone. She replied, “We will call you tomorrow during the morning. Have your plane on stand-by. You may have to take a half hour flight.”

  I was pleased with that. It was unplanned but would make him think we were far from Geneva.

  She continued, “We will try to get closer. We are not going to harm you. You must promise to come alone. There will be two of us. If you double cross us, you can look forward to spending the rest of your life in prison. The tapes have been copied. They are safe. Nobody will see them unless we fail to do some things on a regular basis. And, unless you can produce perfect voice and DNA prints of us, you cannot so anything to stop it. You can have the original back though. You may need it for your purposes.”

  Again there was a comment from the other end. “He wants to bring one other. A man called Giovanni. He is his financier. He’s not a thug. But my father says that we need a legal agreement and Giovanni is good at those.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I did not think that he would come on his own. Two on two would make him comfortable. Tell him OK but I’ll carry an extra gun in that case.”

  She repeated this down the line. “He says you won’t need it. He admires you for what you have done. He’d rather have you on his side. But he says you are a seducer and a bastard for despoiling me.” That was said with a broad grin.

  “He thinks you are a new one. He does not know who you are. He has you down as Charles De Roche. He is going to be surprised.”

  She turned back to the phone. “Sleep well. We’ll speak tomorrow. Good night.”

  She put down the phone. “It’s strange you know. When he saw you last he thought you were just any other businessman. Now he thinks you are like him in some ways. Just as we were talking over lunch.”

  “Let’s not anticipate too much. We’ll discover the truth tomorrow. Now I think we need to get some sleep. We should get to the shops first thing. Say at about half nine. Then we can call your father. I want us to call him at five to twelve. You said in the morning. We’ll see him in this room. We had better draw the doors shut though. It would be a bit much sitting him on that sofa and allowing him to contemplate the bed. He still resents the fact that we are sleeping together. Don’t get fooled by his bonhomie at the moment.”

  “Don’t worry. I know the score. This has been my life for long enough.” I switched on the late news. One could get the French channel from here. There was nothing about St Tropez. A bit about the storms in the Alpes Maritimes and Provence regions. Most about the road accidents they had caused. And a bit about damage to property. That did not surprise me. I thought the sea where we had dumped the car was around forty or fifty feet deep. I had been near that area in a speedboat and knew the prevailing currents went out to sea. The car was unlikely to be washed ashore. And the doors had been locked. I did not think that they would open. Even if they did it would be some time before the bodies floated up. And they would be mostly eaten away by the fish. In fact I suspected they would be skeletons sooner rather than later. The likelihood was that they would be uncovered in time, perhaps next summer, by some sub aqua enthusiast. And by then they would be forgotten, even by their friends.

  I put these thoughts away and headed to the bathroom. Once again Jacqui was singing to herself. She smiled at me and I kissed the back of her neck in passing. “Come on,” I said. “I think we need to get to bed. Or you’ll be too tired to shop tomorrow.”

  “That’s where you don’t know me. I am never too tired to shop,” she replied.

  Once again she was dressed in a black nightdress. This time it was one of her own. It fell to the ground in a flow of silk, and sported a low cut bodice trimmed with lace. “And all I’ve got,” I said, “is a pair of boxer shorts. I don’t like pyjamas.”

  “Well at least they’re not going to be hard to take off,” she said.

  She smiled and looked almost feline. I told her so. The smile became a grin and then a laugh. “You’re the one behaving like a wolf,” she said. “I am just playing the innocent in a long dress covering me down to my ankles.”

  “Maybe down to the ankles,” I replied, “But there are other bits that appear to have greater freedom.”

  She stepped forward and roughly tousled my hair. “Brush your teeth and then come to me.”

  “I plan to,” I replied. “And in more ways than one.”

  GENEVA

  We woke around eight o’clock. Both of us felt like our old selves. We now had a purpose and that gave us renewed energy. We called room service and sat in our lounge to eat our breakfast. I thought it better to avoid the hotel lobby. There was always a possibility that Jacqui’s fathe
r would keep watch and I wanted to retain the element of surprise.

  I knew there was a risk that we could meet them in town. But I doubted it. We would be in the shopping area. That was not where they would look for us. They would expect us to be in the financial area. They would have reckoned that we were planning a financial coup. There was no other way to make the sort of money we had talked about, at least not in the time frame that we had discussed.

  I was confident that, even if asked, Pierre at Fucquet would be silent. He would feel that he had nothing to gain by being truthful. Di Maglio was an important account but not the largest by far. Jacqui had told me that they only used Fucquet for deposit business. They would hold the odd hundred million dollars there, but no more. The really big fee banking business was done elsewhere. That had been another reason for my readiness to go there. If it had been different I would have looked for another bank. And in Geneva I would have been spoilt for choice.

  We left the hotel just after nine. Jacqui had put on a scarf and was wearing my jacket with a turned up collar. She had put her hair up and was wearing sunglasses. I doubted she would be noticed as long as the lobby was crowded. It was a bright but fresh day. So her outfit was not out of the ordinary. A bit eccentric perhaps, but not unusual. I was not in disguise. I doubted Di Maglio knew who I was. There was no reason for him to associate me with Charles Ryder. So nobody would be looking for me. I thought nervously of our last meeting. He had scared me. He scared me less now. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to be in command, just as he had been when he caught me with Jacqui the time before.

  It had all happened just three months after I left Europe. My parents wanted me to be out of the way for a good six months before they stole the money. So we concocted a story about a job in America and off I went to New York. Actually, I had rather liked New York. I got a job with one of the investment banks with my new passport. I had a couple of forged references and they swallowed them without question. The bank was Japanese and I knew they would not check me out. The job I applied for was not sufficiently senior for that. Being employed helped me build up my new identity. And I did not plan to work hard.

  In any event I did not have to. One day I was invited to a party and it was there that I met Jacqui. We went out together the following day. I took her to a restaurant in Greenwich Village. The food was fun rather than brilliant, as indeed is the rule in many of the area’s restaurants. She lived in mid-town Manhattan. She had a small flat in Trump Tower and I lived a dozen blocks north. My area was a bit less fashionable but very convenient for my investment bank. Like many others it had fled the cold wastes of Wall Street and luxuriated in the more select streets of this part of New York. The first day we just said good-bye with a kiss. The second it had lasted a bit longer. There was more than a sense of attraction. There was a hint of passion. On the third, after a visit to one of my favourite watering holes, an Italian restaurant just off 52nd Street, we spent the night together. From that day on, we were together every night. Until, of course, her father burst into her flat that fateful day.

  He had threatened that she would be harmed if ever I returned and I needed to ensure that was not the case. He had been far from gentle with me. Once they had me alone, his men had turned on me. I was kicked in the back of the knee. As I fell down, I felt a boot in my stomach. My ribs ached. Only for another foot, this time in an even heavier boot, to pound into them with even greater force. They kicked me in the stomach and in the back. I felt my whole body ache. I wanted to yell with pain. But I was not going to give them the pleasure of knowing my true fear or of realising my true pain.

  They tore off my shirt and one of them picked up a whip. I heard the rope seer through the air. The whistling sound hit my ears seconds before my mind registered the pain. Then again and again the rope lashed out at my shoulders, at my back, over my buttocks. They beat me everywhere. I felt blood flow from the cuts that it caused. Everything went black and I sank into a deep faint.

  They had not finished with me yet. They threw water over me to bring me round. But it was for no other purpose than to make me suffer more. They held me between two of them and the third punched me in the stomach and the chest. He did it time and again. He enjoyed it for I could see his eyes glisten with pleasure as I coughed and vomited in pain at his blows.

  Then Jacqui’s father had told them to stop. He had walked over to me. He said that I now knew what it meant to hurt. If I saw Jacqui again, she would feel the same pain. If I told anyone who had beaten me, she would feel even more pain. Even if she was his daughter, he would do this to her. She had bought shame onto his house. She would be forgiven but only if she had not brought harm as well. And it was up to me to decide if she had brought harm.

  That had been enough to scare me, but I still contemplated running away with her. I could not find her though. She no longer lived in her flat. She never turned up in the different places she told me she loved. She was nowhere in the museums or art galleries. She never appeared at the theatres. She was not at any concert. In any event it had taken me weeks to get well again after the attack. I told the police three masked men in Central Park had attacked me. I had said it was while jogging one evening. My description was not helpful. Three men in dark jogging suits, masked and with balaclavas. I only recalled they had called me “Spike” and we all supposed it was a case of mistaken identity.

  My Japanese employers were most considerate. They gave me a month’s notice when they heard I would be off work for at least two months. Their empathy with their non-Japanese employees was not exactly one of their strong points. Still they had served their purpose and I did not need them any more.

  Four months after that, I had to go to the Caymans to prepare for the scam. And then I had met Jacqui again. I was less convinced than her that her father would not harm her. But then the short time I had spent in his presence hardly allowed me to give him the benefit of any doubt. It had taken me two months to get better. Nothing had been broken, but I never knew weals and bruises could hurt so much. Every time I washed, I screamed with pain. Each time I bent down I winced. Now, nothing could be seen except for the last of the cuts, and then only in clear sunlight. The hospitals had been good. The treatment had been effective. But the memory lived on.

  With these thoughts to the fore, I headed down to the lobby with Jacqui on my arm. She sensed that something was wrong. She turned to me, “Don’t worry. My father will not hurt me. He won’t hurt you. He will get used to us. And I know he now respects you. That will help. We’ll get through. In the end you may even like him.”

  I smiled. “I wish I could feel as confident. But we will know by tonight. Let’s get out of the lobby as quickly as possible. Keep an eye open for any of your father’s people.”

  Jacqui saw none and so we jumped into a cab and headed to the shops. Luckily Jacqui knew Geneva and we headed to the right boutiques. “Me first,” she said. “That will be more work than for you.”

  The first boutique was staffed by the sort of girls that you only find in a boutique. The first reaction is to ask why they are working at all. The second is to question if their outfits cost more than their likely salaries. The next is to realise that they do it all for a hobby. They are in love with designer labels. Being surrounded by them is the only way that they can survive. They are, almost by definition, beautiful. Often they are failed models. Thus they can show off those near perfect figures with impunity. The excesses of haute couture are safe on their bodies as they flit around their temples in a state of near ecstasy.

  There were two girls there. The younger served us and she fitted the role well. She was tall for a model. Her figure was that bit too full. The rounded face gave a hint of plumpness to come. But now, at twenty-two or three, it made her appear sensuous rather than solid. She listened carefully to Jacqui’s instructions.

  “I need a couple of evening dresses. I like them in black or red. They need to be figure hugging. I want them low at the f
ront and back. They should not have capes or anything like that to go with them. I am normally a size 12. At least when the labels measure true sizes. In some I could be a ten.”

  “We have a wonderful number from Feraud and another from Versace.”

  “Can I try them on please?”

  The dresses were brought out. They were carried as if they were offerings to the Gods. I was given a chair. I had been delegated to a bit part in this ritual. They expected me to pay. I was the bearer of the credit card, hardly a major role. Jacqui disappeared into one of the little rooms at the back of the boutique.

  I heard the rustle of material as she undressed and tried on the first of the dresses. She came out for me to view. She had tried on the Louis Feraud. I thought that was rather apt. After all it had been one of the reserve names we had established for the scam. The Feraud she was wearing then was one my mother could never have aspired to. It was a tight fitting black sheath of silk. The neckline plunged between her breasts so that the bodice seemed to push further up and out than usual. The sheath effect continued down to floor level until mid calf when it flared out. That not only gave it balance but helped direct one’s attention to the hips that were swaying gently as she undulated towards me.

  “My God,” I said. “That’s not so much a dress as a seduction kit. That will distract me, let alone any one else in the vicinity.”

  “It feels good too,” she said. “I need to get some smaller undies though. You can see the panty line through the material. That looks terribly naff, a bit tarty in fact. I can get the right sort of stuff at the shop round the corner. They apparently have a full range of La Perla.”

  She lowered her voice and whispered to me, “They are the hottest thing imaginable in what the assistant has just called my personal accessories.”