by AnonYMous
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m gonna kill that fuck in the suit in a minute. Send someone down here to clear up the mess.’
Jonah Clementine heard the threat and reeled in outrage. ‘Who the hell do you think you’re calling a fuck?’ Turning to Gunther, he barked, ‘You! Get this lowlife outta here now or you can kiss your fuckin’ job goodbye.’
‘He’s okay. Leave him be.’ With that, Gunther turned and walked away. Valerie and the other customers watched him go in silence, all wondering what would happen next, and all trying not to stare at the dark figure casually smoking a cigarette at the bar.
It was many years since anyone had disobeyed one of Clementine’s orders, and besides, he hadn’t got to be the man he was by giving up. Visibly seething, he took up the issue himself. He was a man of great power and wealth, and even greater self-importance, so to be publicly defied by a mere security guard like Gunther, as well as insulted by barfly scum, was something he wasn’t used to. And he had his blonde bimbo to impress.
Staring at the Kid, he barked again, ‘Put that cigarette out now.’
A few painfully long seconds passed before the Kid duly did as ordered, stubbing the cigarette out in the silver dish that Valerie had left on the bartop for tips.
‘Thank you,’ said Clementine triumphantly, his mouth twisted in a malicious sneer. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ The Kid ignored him. Instead, he reached over to the pack of cigarettes on the bar. He pulled another one out and placed it in the corner of his mouth.
Clementine reared up. His blonde girlfriend rubbed his back to help spur him on. He and the Kid were no more than a yard apart and the bimbo looked like the confrontation was turning her on.
‘Oh you’re a fucking comedian, aren’t you? Ha-ha-fucking-ha,’ Clementine sneered. Lowering his voice menacingly, he hissed, ‘You light that while I’m here, I’ll have you taken out to the desert and shot like a dog.’
The Kid took a long look at Clementine through his sunglasses. For a few seconds the two of them stared at each other, motionless. Then Clementine lunged out to snatch the cigarette from the other’s mouth. The Kid grabbed his arm with his left hand, stopping its forward motion stone dead. Then, with his clenched right fist, he punched Clementine in the face. Hard. All without even getting off his stool.
The businessman swayed gently on the spot, a look of complete bewilderment on his face. Blood began to seep out of both his nostrils, pouring down to his mouth. After a painfully long couple of seconds, he fell backwards in a heap on the floor. There was an unpleasant noise as his skull connected with the hardwood boards.
The blonde in the gold hot pants threw her arms in the air and squealed.
‘Oh my God, Jonah! Are you okay?’ She bent down and leaned over him to see if he was all right. Her six-inch stilettos and the weight of her enhanced breasts made it difficult for her to keep her balance, so she pressed a hand down hard into Clementine’s chest to balance herself. He didn’t react. After a few attempts at patting him on the cheek to try to rouse him she looked back up at the Kid. ‘He’s unconscious,’ she said accusingly. ‘You’ve knocked him out.’
‘He ain’t unconscious.’
‘He is. I’m telling you. He’s out cold!’
The Kid sucked on the end of his unlit cigarette and it lit up brightly before he responded. ‘If he was unconscious,’ he growled, ‘he’d still have a pulse.’
The bimbo stared open-mouthed at Clementine’s body for a moment. It took her a while, but she eventually realized that he wasn’t breathing. Again, she looked up at the Kid, who had now turned back to his half-filled glass of Sam Cougar.
‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘How d’ya light up like that? That’s, like, so-o-o cool.’
She stood up and walked over to him. She placed a hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. ‘So, d’you wanna buy me a drink?’
‘Beat it, skank,’ he snarled in a voice like wave-washed gravel. Then he looked over at Valerie the barmaid and nodded at his drink. ‘Miss?’
‘Yes, sir?’ The girl’s heart was racing so fast that she was surprised she could speak at all.
‘Fill the glass.’
Ten
Sanchez was a man with many flaws. One of the worst was a weakness for gambling. It was a pastime that had cost him a fair amount of his wealth over the years, but the lure of a bet and the opportunity to make money without breaking sweat was, for him, powerful and seductive to resist.
From the second he had laid eyes on the money in the envelope he had found in his hotel room, he had been concocting all kinds of plans about how he would speculate with it. And in spite of Elvis’s warning that the envelope had been intended for a contract killer, name and identity unknown, Sanchez couldn’t pass up the opportunity. So he headed straight for the hotel’s casino. He had the envelope containing the photos and the twenty thousand dollars tucked away down the front of his shorts, cleverly concealed by his red Hawaiian shirt, which hung over them. When he’d bought the shirt, the shop assistant had informed him that, wearing it, he’d never be able to hide anything. Well, she’d been wrong.
Being a tolerably honest sort – by his estimation, at least – Sanchez was fully intending to hand the envelope in to the reception desk. After all, it didn’t belong to him. And when he handed it in, it would still have the money in it: right amount, right number of bills in the right denomination. But before he did that, he was just going to use twenty thousand as stake money in the casino. As soon as he’d made a decent profit, he would slip twenty thousand in hundred-dollar bills into the envelope, seal it and drop it off at reception. No one would be any the wiser.
When he had first decided on this plan, his intention had been to play it safe and make only a small profit. But by the time he actually made it down to the casino on the lower ground floor, he had decided that he would only quit once he’d doubled the stake money. Twenty thousand for Sanchez and twenty thousand for the hitman, whoever he was. It seemed only fair. His palms were sweating as he stepped out of the elevator and into the casino area. One good bet, and his vacation would be off to the best possible start.
The casino was straight out of one of Sanchez’s dreams (well, leaving aside that the croupiers weren’t monkeys in red suits and hats; Sanchez’s dreams had their odder moments). It was vast and opulent and the lighting made the whole area glow a bright golden colour. The carpet was deep crimson in colour, not dissimilar to the red of the waistcoats worn by croupiers and waitresses. And there were customers everywhere. The sound of rolling dice, cards being slapped down on baize-topped tables, roulette wheels spinning, cheers from winning gamblers, sighs from losers, coins rattling into trays, it was all there.
Sanchez was in heaven.
To his left were rows of slot machines, mostly being used by elderly people. Directly ahead was a bar fronted by rows of stools on which a few losers sat drowning their sorrows. Over to his right were the roulette and blackjack tables, about twenty of them in all. Each table had a croupier and two or three gamblers seated at it, so there was plenty of room for Sanchez. He could pick any table he wanted, but what game did he fancy? Blackjack, poker, craps, roulette?
What he needed was a sign. He was not overly superstitious, but he did believe in good luck. Some kind of omen would set him on the right path, he felt. And he spotted one almost at once. There was a roulette table near the centre of the room at which three players sat taking their chances. One of them was the self-styled Mystic Lady, Annabel de Frugyn.
Jackpot! Despite his personal distaste, right now she was just the person he had hoped to see. If the rumours were true, then this crazy old crone could see into the future. So who better to stand next to?
Sanchez made his way over to the table, heading for Annabel. She was seated on a stool between two tiny middle-aged Chinese women. Each of them had huge stacks of chips in front of her suggesting that they were all winning. Or that they had only just started playing. Sanchez grabbed a free stool from
another table and manoeuvred it in between the Mystic Lady and the smaller of the two Chinese women, nudging her to one side so he could squeeze in to the left of Annabel. The sight of him sidling up next to her had the desired effect. She was pleased to see him.
‘I knew you couldn’t stay away, Sanchez,’ she said, winking at him with quite horrible coyness.
‘Ha ha! Yeah, that’s right,’ he replied with a shameful level of forced enthusiasm. ‘So, you havin’ any luck?’
‘Oh my, yes. I’m on a real winning streak, Sanchez. The hotel manager gave me five hundred dollars and I’ve tripled it already.’ Well, she had received five hundred bucks from Powell. Sanchez didn’t need to know how she’d earned it.
Sanchez reached down to the envelope tucked into the front of his shorts. He’d wedged it in good and proper, and he provoked a number of odd glances from the others as he tugged at it three or four times before it came free. The sudden release made his arm shoot back and he accidentally elbowed the small Chinese lady in the face, knocking her off her stool to land on her back on the floor. Shit! Thought Sanchez. Still, no time for an apology. She’d be okay, one way or the other.
Recovering his composure, he opened the envelope, pulled out the thick wad of bills and casually tossed it over the table to the croupier. The latter’s face gave away nothing. He was a bald, olive-skinned young man in his late twenties, and he had an impressive poker face when it came to showing a complete lack of interest or surprise when large amounts of cash were thrown at him.
The tiny Chinese woman climbed back on to her stool muttering angrily and looking about ready to fell Sanchez with a karate chop. But when she saw the wad of cash she seemed to change her mind, and even attempted a wan smile at the bar owner. Everyone liked a guy with money. And for once, Sanchez was that guy. Smiling himself, he called over to the croupier. ‘Chips please, good sir.’
The croupier picked up Sanchez’s money, expertly counted it, and replaced it with a pile of red, yellow and blue chips of corresponding value. Sanchez could sense that his female companions were mildly impressed by his apparent wealth.
Annabel confirmed it. ‘Hey, Sanchez, that bar of yours must be doing really well!’
‘Sure. I’m a pretty astute businessman,’ he bragged.
‘Reckon we should go into business together,’ suggested Annabel. ‘With your business sense and my foresight, we could make a killing.’
‘Sure. Let’s start now. You tell me red or black and I’ll lay down the money.’
‘Oh, this one is definitely gonna be red.’
‘You sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
She did sound incredibly confident. More telling, to Sanchez, she placed a stack of chips down on red.
‘Last bets, please,’ prompted the croupier. Although his request was aimed at everyone at the table he was looking directly at Sanchez, daring him to prove he had the balls to gamble more than just one chip on his first bet.
Sanchez weighed up his options. He had to make a decision quickly. Oh, what the hell? It’s all found money anyway, he decided.
And he placed all his chips on red.
Eleven
In the time that had elapsed since the Bourbon Kid had punched the former bank boss Jonah Clementine in the face, killing him instantly, no new customers had come into the bar for a drink. The leggy blonde glamour model who had, until very recently, been hanging off Mr Clementine’s arm had left almost immediately, most likely heading to the casino in the hopes of finding a wealthy substitute before they all got snagged by other gold-diggers. Slowly and unobtrusively, the other drinkers in the bar had followed her out. None of them had made sudden movements to get up and leave, but they had all discreetly finished up their drinks and conversations and, one by one, made their way out of the bar.
Valerie the barmaid had no one new to serve, but tried to busy herself wiping down parts of the bar as far away from the Kid as possible. All the other staff had been closer to the exit behind the bar and had dashed through it before Valerie got the chance. With the hotel having a policy that one member of staff had to be available behind the bar at all times, she was stuck there until one of them plucked up the guts to return. Which wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.
For the first twenty minutes after the killing the only people to enter the bar were two guys from the security team. Gunther had sent them along after the Kid had warned him that a corpse would need disposing of. Soon. The two men had slipped in quietly and lifted Clementine’s lifeless body from the black hardwood floor, which now had a pool of his blood settling on it. They carried it round behind the bar, at which Valerie threw a fit.
‘You can’t bring that back here!’ she moaned. ‘It ain’t hygienic!’
The security officer at the back holding Clementine’s legs shrugged. ‘Gunther’s orders. Wants the body hidden away until the ambulance gets here.’
‘Well stash it in the kitchen, then. I don’t want it back here.’
‘That’s what we’re tryin’ to do. If you could just get the fuck outta the way, it’d help. Look now – there’s blood spillin’ all over the goddam floor.’
Valerie stepped aside and watched as they struggled through the door at the back of the bar through which all her colleagues had disappeared a short while earlier.
‘An’ don’t expect us to clear the blood up after you,’ she yelled. ‘You can do that yourselves!’
From his seat at the bar, the Bourbon Kid heard one of the security guys shout back ‘Aw, go fuck yourself!’ from the kitchen. Neither of them had dared to take a look at him on their way past him, but they were quite happy to mouth off at a young barmaid. In their defence, they wouldn’t want to piss him off. There had been enough about him on the news in recent times for people to have learned that it was wise to avoid him. He killed without motive whenever it suited him. And he didn’t care who he killed, man, woman or child. At least, that’s what the news reports were saying. Who would want to put that theory to the test? Sure there were bigger guys than him – tough guys, too – staying in the hotel, but the aura of evil and unpredictability that surrounded him ensured that no one, no matter how big, would deliberately set out to antagonize him.
Valerie was desperately looking for an excuse to duck out into the kitchen area. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the Bourbon Kid, but unfortunately she was the nearest person to him. Until, that is, a lone figure walked into the bar. A man brave enough to sit with the Kid. He had been passing through the main hall adjacent to the bar and had caught sight of the people hurrying out. Valerie saw him stop on his way in and quiz a young couple about what had happened. She pretended to be busy wiping down the bar, but watched as the couple nodded towards the Kid, obviously explaining to the man what they had seen unfold when the Bourbon Kid had met Jonah Clementine. Then, apparently undaunted, this man sauntered into the place and headed over to the corner of the bar where the Kid was sitting.
The Kid had just finished his third glass of bourbon. The man approaching him had chit-chat in mind, the kind that he hoped might interest the killer. Valerie recognized him as one of the singers from the Back From The Dead show. His name was Julius and he was a fairly innocuous-looking middle-aged black man with a smooth bald head like a pool ball. At full height he was no more than about five-feet eight-inches tall, but he was slenderly built and extremely light on his feet. The pomp in his walk and the suit of purple velvet made him look a little like a pimp, ready to offer the Kid one of his whores.
In fact, he was a James Brown impersonator, in the hotel to win the singing contest. The single-breasted purple suit jacket he wore hung open to reveal a bright blue shirt underneath. His pants were flared below the knee, giving the suit a very seventies look. He took up a place at the bar on a stool just a yard to the left of the Bourbon Kid. Once he’d made himself comfortable he called out to Valerie.
‘Yo Valerie!’
She had been doing her best to stay away from that end of the b
ar, hoping that it would encourage any new customers to walk down to the other end. But now Julius was sitting there right next to the man who was causing Valerie (along with everyone else) to steer well clear.
‘A beer for me, and whatever my friend here is drinkin’.’
The Kid responded immediately in his usual grating, gravelly tone. ‘I ain’t your fuckin’ friend,’ he growled, not even looking over at his new companion.
‘You could be,’ Julius suggested with a smile, which was ignored.
‘But I won’t be.’
Valerie picked up the bottle of Sam Cougar from the back of the bar and made her way over to where the two men were sitting. She filled the Kid’s empty glass. Straight to the top. Without being asked.
You had to hand it to the guy, for Julius was clearly undeterred by the Kid’s unpleasant manner. ‘I know who you are,’ he said.
Valerie’s hand was shaking as she replaced the lid on the bottle of Sam Cougar, and she was relieved that she had to return it to its place on a shelf at the back of the bar. After setting it down next to a bottle of vodka, she took a deep breath and headed off to a fridge at the far end to fetch the beer that Julius had ordered.
The Kid took a drag on his cigarette and finally turned to look at the black man with the beaming white smile who had seated himself next to him at the bar.
‘You know who I am, huh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good for you.’
‘You’re the Bourbon Kid.’
‘So they say.’
Julius continued smiling like someone who’d just won big in the casino. Then he let out a small laugh. ‘Oh, you don’t disappoint. Do you know who I am?’
The Bourbon Kid took another drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke into Julius’s face. ‘Let me guess. You’re Gandhi, right?’
‘Hey! That’s funny. You’re a funny guy, y’know that?’
‘You do know I’m about to kill you, don’t you?’