by John Gubert
“You mean panties and bras.”
“Yes, it’s a rather sweet expression isn’t it.”
“You may call it sweet. Sounds prissy to me. Still I am only too happy to treat you to some. I’ll help you with the fitting.”
“You have become a dirty old man. And you’re so young. I am going to have to train you. By the time you’re forty you’ll either be exhausted or impossible. I don’t know which.”
She turned to the assistant. “I’ll definitely take this. I won’t try on the Versace. It looked too fussy. Have you got one more in this style?”
“We have a Dior which should fit you perfectly. It is much more expensive than the others are. But it is superb. It is really the softest, most beautiful material. A dream cut. Once one puts it on, I think it will be difficult to ever take it off,” burbled the assistant.
As Jacqui headed for the changing room, I glanced out of the window. I immediately recognised him. It was her uncle. It was the uncle whom we had seen in the garage. I didn’t think he had seen me. But I could take no chances. I ducked down, my hand inside my jacket to check that I was carrying my gun. I knew I was for I could feel it in my waistband. I checked though nevertheless. Luckily the shop was empty as I crawled to the back. I got up behind a beige silk curtain close to the changing room that Jacqui had headed for.
The door opened and the uncle walked in. An assistant came through the far door and greeted him. She obviously recognised him. “You have come for Madame’s robe, Monsieur. It is ready. I will fetch it.”
I groaned. It was our bad luck that he had appeared. Especially when he was only on an errand. He had come to the shop by chance. We would lose our element of surprise unless I could stop Jacqui re-appearing. I had to do something fast.
At that moment a car screeched to a halt in front of the shop. Two masked men jumped out. They stormed into the boutique. They shouted, “everybody freeze.” One had an Uzi sub-machine gun. The other had a pistol.
The assistant and uncle stopped in their tracks. I could see uncle’s hand moving. He raised it slowly, keeping his back turned. It moved up his chest. He must have been wearing a shoulder holster. I thought that this was all we needed. There was a risk that Jacqui would re-appear. There was a risk that she would be recognised. There was a risk that we would have a shoot out. And here I was with an illegal gun. And it looked as if I was in the middle of a gangland shootout.
As uncle’s hand moved upwards, I realised that they had noticed what he was doing. It was as if they were waiting for an excuse to shoot him in self-defence. A horrible thought crossed my mind. I wondered if they were police working undercover or really another gang. I decided they must be another gang. Police undercover would not be wearing those masks. “What the fuck do I do now?” I said to myself.
At this point one of the two reappeared with the other assistant and Jacqui. She was in another dress, but I hardly gave it a look.
The man covered her with his gun. “Look what we got here. She’s the Di Maglio girl. We got ourselves a jackpot. We blast the old man and can use the girl to get whatever we want. Old man Di Maglio dotes on her.”
The other man looked at Jacqui. She looked contemptuously at him.
“Tell your scum to keep his hands off me,” she said. “Or you’ll be dead, and soon.”
Uncle had stopped even looking for his gun. He obviously did not know why Jacqui was in Geneva. It was possible her father had not told him of the pending meeting. Even if he had, they had maybe expected it to be somewhere outside the City.
The man with the sub-machine gun raised it casually. “Say your prayers,” he said to the uncle. “It’s curtains. With love from Rastinov.”
That meant nothing to me. I had no love for uncle, but they were going to shoot him in cold blood. I wasn’t sure but I thought he had stopped going for his gun because he had seen Jacqui. I sensed he did not want to start a gunfight with her in the room. The machine gun was rising and was now pointed at uncle’s chest. He had turned round. He looked at Jacqui. He seemed to move his lips. I did not know what he was saying. Perhaps he was praying.
The gun finger curled around the trigger. The blast of the bullet caught him in the neck and the gun went flying across the ground. The second bullet tore through the air and hit the other man in the stomach. Another gun, this time it was a pistol, clattered to the floor. Uncle dived to his left and collected the Uzi. I kicked aside the second gunman who was crawling towards his fallen gun and picked it up myself.
I turned to the uncle. “Can you get us out of this? No murder though.”
He turned to the older assistant. “Call the police. Ask for Inspector Drozet. And say it was me calling.” He then turned to me “I’ll sort it out.”
I went to the gunman I had kicked. I did not know how bad he was. But he looked pretty grim as he lay there, with his breathing rising and fading in short rasping gasps. The other looked even worse. I did not like it. I was adopting the wrong profile for the future.
The uncle eased over to me. “I don’t know who you are. But you’ll be OK. There will be no record of this. Thanks. You should be on our side. You’re good.”
I turned to Jacqui, who had remained remarkably calm during all the commotion. “Is that the Dior? It’s rather nice. Less erotic than the Louis Feraud but it suits you. It has class. The other has more style but less class. You should take it. We can then head off to get that stuff from La Perla.”
“I’ll take your advice,” said Jacqui. She turned to the younger assistant who was trembling like a leaf. The poor kid kept turning to the injured gunmen. She gaped at the bloodstained floor. She gasped as she saw the pallid faces of the wounded men, and heard the rasping of their breath. Jacqui interrupted her, “Could I have the two dresses, and I would like to try on some classic plain day dresses. In black and red again. I have all the accessories for that with me.”
The sale seemed to jerk the assistant back to reality and she walked to the changing room. She came back to the shop and collected some outfits, soon disappearing again. She was back in her role as if two men bleeding to death in her shop was not unusual. It was beyond me. We were in a side street in Geneva. This sort of thing could happen in Manhattan but not in orderly, law abiding Switzerland. I almost felt I could not take any more of this topsy-turvy state of affairs. I noticed at that point that the older assistant was remarkably calm and had been making a series of phone calls.
She turned to uncle. “An ambulance from the Hopital du Croix will be here shortly. The Inspector and his brigade will come in five minutes. The firm you mentioned will come here to clean the shop. We will close. I can’t have any of my customers appearing and seeing this mess.”
I turned to uncle. “I will be calling Di Maglio as agreed later this morning. The meeting will take place in Geneva. I will give him a location. We must not be followed. I think you owe us a favour.”
“Why did you save me?” he said. “You could have kept quiet.”
“I saved Jacqui as well,” I reminded him. “And you because you were willing to die to protect her from a gun fight.”
He did not react. I think he was puzzled. I left it at that. All the same I turned to him and questioned him about the assistant. She was too calm. She was too collected.
He laughed, “Colette is married to one of us. She is part of the family. Like Jacqui. You saw how cool she was. All our women are like that. They are taught to be calm. It is important in situations like this. Otherwise you could be dead. The other girl is an outsider. That was why she screwed up. Jacqui though guessed what was needed. She acted as if all was normal. It will get the girl over the shock. Although I guess she’ll be hit by it all later on. But we can manage that.”
The ambulance turned up. The injured were removed. It all looked very efficient. The police arrived. They seemed to be real police. They treated the uncle with courtesy. I was told that I would not be needed. I was told a statement would be issued and it would name an undercover
agent as having foiled a murder attempt on a Geneva based businessman. “It is normal to keep the name confidential in cases like this,” added the inspector.
I found it hard to understand how the Di Maglios appeared to have even the Swiss police in their pocket. I had this nagging feeling that these were not true police. They rang false. I would have to check this out with Jacqui.
It was at that moment that Jacqui appeared. “I think I’ve spent enough,” she said. “All I need now is some underwear and a shoe shop. Oh and we better get another case for these clothes. And you need to go to a man’s shop. There is one close by that will have all you need. I’ve paid. Let’s go.”
It all seemed quite normal. But this was the crazy world I now lived in. We went shopping and got into gunfights. I acted like a trained gunman and not like an amateur who had taken lessons in the USA just a few weeks ago. I had to admit those were lessons well worth while. And, to be honest, they had been quite intensive and run by experts in warfare. They were mainly ex-CIA.
In the end, my shopping was uneventful. A couple of evening shirts and an evening suit. I also took some new ties along with a plain black bow tie. And then I got a few casual smart outfits. I had never had designer labels like that, but felt that my parents (for it was their money) would not grudge me this extravagance.
We grabbed another cab for it was approaching eleven. As we returned to the hotel, I shared my suspicions about the police with Jacqui. She shrugged her shoulders.
“You could be right. If it is in the Press tomorrow they were genuine. If not, thank my father for his planning. I knew the boutique. I’ve been there before. But I never knew the family association. It was just our bad luck that uncle walked in. And his good luck that you were there. The good thing is that will help the meeting with my father.”
We handed our packages and parcels to the concierge and told him to send them up to our room. Meanwhile we headed to the lounge and ordered a coffee. The place was deserted. The only other guests were a couple of elderly women. From time to time they exchanged the odd whispered comments punctuated by screechy laughs. Typical of many of the elderly rich the world over, they enjoyed ruining the reputations of friends and acquaintances between sips of coffee and delicate bites of petite sculptured cakes. They were disinterested in us, having glanced over inquisitively on our entrance. They had failed to recognise us and therefore assumed that we were not worth talking about.
I picked up the mobile and pushed the redial button. It took me through to Jacqui’s father, for he was the last person we had called. A gruff, sharp voice answered the phone. One word “yeah” came over in a menacing and irritable tone.
“Mr Di Maglio,” I said quietly. “We met before. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Why should I remember you? You haven’t told me who you are,” snarled back the voice.
“I saw your brother this morning. He was in a bit of a tight spot. Almost as tight as the previous time we had met, and much more unpleasant. I have also come across friends of yours recently. They had a black sedan. And then there was a couple. I don’t think they were married. But now they are eternally together.” I grinned to Jacqui and waited for the response.
“You’re Jacqui’s guy,” he said. “Well at least you’re better than some of the creeps she has brought home in the past. I could do with someone like you on my side. Where do we meet?”
“I think we need to get something straight first. I don’t trust you. Last time we met, you were hardly convivial. I want an undertaking that you will leave us to finish the job we have in hand. That’s Jacqui and me. And the job will take up to a year. Only then can we talk of working together. And even then it will be conditional. But the conditions will be set by Jacqui and not me.”
He was puzzled. “Where have we met. I don’t know you.”
As I spoke, Jacqui’s eyes widened. She looked shocked. She had not known. I had not mentioned this part of the story to her. She looked progressively more miserable and I thought she was going to start to cry. As I spoke, I took her hand and rubbed it against my cheek and the corner of my lips. “You almost killed me. You and your thugs beat me up. It took me two months to recover. The only good thing is that I then took out a couple of months to learn self-defence and self-protection. That’s where I learnt to handle guns.”
He was still confused. “I’ve beaten up loads of people. When was it?”
“You found me with Jacqui. In Trump Towers last year.”
“You’re that shit,” he said. “Mind you, you never cried out even when we kicked the living daylights out of you. That made the boys madder. Hold on a minute though. What are you doing with Jacqui?”
“We didn’t plan anything. It was chance. Perhaps it was fate. But now we are together again. And we want to remain so. You are going to have to trust me. We need your word. I hesitate to ask for your word of honour.”
“Fuck you,” growled Di Maglio. “But I accept. I need to see you and Jacqui. I owe you. Jacqui knows we have honour. So don’t say we don’t. Or everything’s off.”
“I’ll apologise when you earn it. To date I hardly feel grateful to you. But be warned. If anything happens to either of us, someone special whom you don’t control will get a fun video. And you’ll have plenty of time to regret it.”
“OK where do we meet?” he asked.
“At the Bergues. Ask for Mr De Roche. The name is Charles De Roche. We’ll meet in a suite. But it should be you and your adviser. And make sure that there’s nobody else. If you double cross me, there’s no second chance.”
“OK we’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.” With that he put down the phone.
Jacqui turned to me, “You didn’t tell me that you had been beaten up. They hurt you.” She was now crying. It was anger rather than anything else. I knew I had to calm her. Her anger would be directed against her father and that was not going to help us in our delicate task. Moreover the old ladies were now looking at us with interest. They sensed scandal.
I nodded to the waiter and told him to put the coffee on our bill. Taking Jacqui by the arm, I led her out to the lift and up to the suite. “He was mad. He was furious. He hurt me because he thought that would keep me from you. I told you about his threats. The beating was his way of taking extra insurance. We need him now though. And in the end, you might be able to get him on your side. I would rather have him with us than against us.”
Jacqui nodded. “I know you’re right. But how could he do that? Why can’t he just let me go? I didn’t want you to be hurt.”
I blew her a kiss. “Forget it. We need to see that we get what we want in the future. Stop worrying about the past.”
I thought she would be all right. We needed to be ready for her father. This was going to be a tough meeting. Above all, we needed to be sure that we had him as an accomplice. He would be useful insurance. The last thing I wanted was for us to be looking over our shoulders and wondering if he or his men were waiting for us. I thought we could manage it as long as we kept our cool.
Jacqui came out of the bathroom. She had made up and looked wonderful again. She was beautiful. Her hair, her face, her body, her clothes were all near perfect. And I loved her. I had never known love before. That mixture of thinking as one. That sense of communicating without speaking. It was the pleasure of her touch, even if it was fleeting and accidental. The wonder of our closeness as we made love.
I started at the sound and answered the phone. “Send them up,” I said as I pulled myself back to the present. “It’s them. Let me start. But treat him as if all was normal. We need to get it right.”
I shut the large double wooden doors that separated the bedroom from the lounge area of the suite. Di Maglio was not going to look at the huge bed. He may have realised that our relationship was hardly going to revert to platonic. On the other hand it was not going to do anyone any favours to taunt him.
There was a knock on the door. It was just a single knock. I drew my gun and went t
o one side, signalling Jacqui to open. I was sure that there was no threat, but it still paid to be cautious. She opened the door. I recognised Di Maglio. He was medium height, slightly built and had actually a quite pleasant face. Seeing Jacqui he smiled. It seemed genuine to me. He took her gently in his arms and kissed her on her head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I shouldn’t have. But I thought it was right for you.”
Behind him was Giovanni. He was a small man. His dark suit fitted him quite well. His scrawny neck protruded out of a slightly large shirt collar. His features were bird like. Big thick rimmed glasses sat atop a thin hooked nose. A pointed head accentuated his baldness. And two large protruding ears framed that bizarre sight. Giovanni may have been good at his job, but he was never going to win the Mr Universe stakes. And, unless he was very rich, I doubted he had much success with the girls.
I asked Di Maglio if he wanted a drink. He declined. He looked at me, smiled and held out his hand, “Sorry. I goofed. I should have realised that any boyfriend of Jacqui’s would be all right. Giovanni was annoyed. He tells me that I behaved like a fool. I agree. Girls sleep with their men friends nowadays before they marry them. Everyone has a few tries before they find the right one. In my day we had tarts and we married virgins. I should have moved with the times.”
He put his arm round Jacqui. And then he smiled at me. He seemed quite likeable. But I knew I mustn’t drop my guard. “Look, I’ve apologised to both of you. That’s what Giovanni told me to do. And funnily enough, I wanted to. Not so much yesterday when he told me too. Rather today after you helped my brother. You became one of the family when you did that.”
I moved as if to protest. He stopped me, saying, “I know you don’t want to be part of it. There will be no force. But the offer’s there. Now tell me what this is all about.”
I looked him fully in the eyes as I talked. He did not blink or even seem ill at ease. “My father has got his hand on seed money that’s going to make us billionaires. You need not know what we are going to do. But first of all Jacqui is going to help launder the seed money. We need to do that as soon as possible. Then we’ll get down to the high finance part and make our money. We need to be incognito or the police will be on to us. We have taken steps to make sure that we cannot be recognised. We have insurance. We own some papers that we may be able to trade against if we get caught. If we don’t we can use them for our own purposes and make more money. We also now have your tapes. There are two copies. Here though is the original back. That way you will always remember what is in it and how incriminating it is. You will get the copies back once we have got through this. If anything happens to us, they go to the police. And then you’re history. Perhaps I should trust you. But it’s going to take time.”