The birthday girl

by Stephen Leather

  'Do you have any pillows?' she asked.

  'Pillows?' he repeated, confused.

  She stroked the sheepskin rug, her scarlet nails highlighted by the white fur. 'I've never done it on a sheepskin rug,' she said.

  Nelson grinned, unable to believe his luck. 'I'll be right back,' he said.

  He rushed upstairs, took off his jacket and grabbed two pillows from his bed. He had a sudden thought and went through to his bathroom. He gave himself a couple of squirts of a minty breath freshener and from the top shelf of his medicine cabinet he took two Trojan condoms. He didn't like wearing them, but more and more girls insisted on it, until they got to know him anyway. He was halfway out of the bathroom door when he had another thought and returned for a third. He didn't want to have to break off for replacements if things went as well as he expected them to. He slipped the condoms into his back pocket.

  When he got back downstairs, Jenny was standing naked by the fireplace, holding the two champagne-filled glasses. Her clothes were in a tidy pile on one of the sofas. 'What took you so long?' she asked, handing him a glass.

  Nelson dropped the pillows on to the rug and loosened his tie with one hand as he took the champagne. Jenny clinked glasses with him. 'This is going to be the best,' she promised. She'd arranged her long blonde hair so that it hung over her breasts and almost to her crotch. It was the most erotic sight Nelson had ever seen – she was naked and yet at the same time hidden. His throat felt as dry as sand and he gulped the champagne down in one go.

  Jenny picked the bottle of champagne off the mantelpiece and refilled his glass. As she moved, Nelson could see the triangle of soft blonde curls where her thighs joined.

  He took his tie off and threw it on top of her clothes and began unbuttoning his shirt. He couldn't take his eyes off her body.

  For the first time he saw a scar across her stomach, a slightly raised line that wound from her navel across to her left thigh.

  It wasn't a clean surgeon's cut but jagged and rough as if it had been a long time healing. He found the scar suddenly thrilling.

  He could picture her in a knife fight, eyes narrowed, crouched like a tigress.

  'Let me do that,' she said, stepping forward. She undid his buttons, taking her time and scratching his chest with her nails as she worked, her eyes fixed on his. He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it. She took it from his hand and put it on the coffee table. Nelson stood behind her, and as she straightened up he cupped his hands around her breasts. She groaned throatily and leant against him, slipping her hands behind her back and between his thighs. He nuzzled his face in her hair.

  Her perfume was intoxicating and he breathed it in. Her hands moved expertly, touching and teasing him until he felt he was going to burst.

  She turned, panting as she slipped the shirt off his shoulders.

  As it dropped to the ground he grabbed her and kissed her. He pressed his lips against hers as if trying to devour her, and as she sucked on his tongue she reached for his trousers and he felt her undo his belt and pull down his zipper. She did it tantalisingly slowly, kissing him all the while and moaning with passion.

  Nelson ran his hands through her hair and down the small of her back. His hands felt rough against her skin as he caressed her firm buttocks. He felt his trousers fall around his ankles and then her hands moved inside his boxer shorts, holding his flesh for the first time. 'Lie down on the rug,' he gasped.

  She laughed and did as she was told while he ripped off his socks and shorts. He stood over her, drinking her in with his eyes, as she moved her legs apart and smiled up at him. 'Like what you see?' she asked.

  'Oh, sweet Jesus, yes,' he said, trembling. He dropped down on his knees, his arms trembling. He was surprised at the way he was reacting to her. He'd been with beautiful girls before, black and white, and it certainly wasn't the first time he'd had sex on the sheepskin rug, but she was turning him into a trembling jelly.

  He was finding it hard to breathe and was sweating profusely.

  He lay down next to her, licking and kissing her neck as his hands roamed over her body. His right hand moved over the scar. He could feel the raised line and he traced it across her stomach and over her thigh, then he moved his hand between her legs, trying to probe inside her, but she resisted, clamping her thighs together and denying him access. He tried to force her thighs apart but she resisted more; her leg muscles were like steel. Then she moved quickly, pushing him on to his back and kissing him again. She reached between his legs and held him, moving her hand faster and faster, until all he could think about was what she was doing and how good it felt. 'How does that feel?' she said, her voice shaking a little in time with her movements.

  'It feels… unbelievable,' he said.

  She moved slowly down his body, tickling the inside of his thighs with her fingertips as she allowed her hair to play over his skin. He closed his eyes and rubbed them with the back of his hands. When he opened them again he had trouble focusing.

  There seemed to be two ceiling fans even though he knew there was only one.

  Jenny planted soft kisses around his stomach as she ran her hands up and down his legs, scratching with her nails and driving him mad with desire. He wanted to be inside her more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, but he was finding it harder to stay awake. It couldn't have been the champagne – he'd only had two glasses. His eyelids felt heavy and he forced them apart.

  There were four ceiling fans, then the four split into eight, then there were more than he could count. The room was spinning and he tried to sit up, but Jenny slid a hand up his chest and pushed him back on to the rug. She felt so strong, or maybe it was just that he was losing his strength. He tried to talk, to tell her that something was wrong, but his mouth wouldn't work.

  She must have realised that he was having problems because she stopped playing with him and he felt her move up so that she was lying next to him, her hair across his chest like a silky blanket. She was smiling. 'How do you feel now?' she asked, though it sounded as if she was talking through water.

  His mouth tried to form the words but he couldn't speak. His eyes wouldn't stay open. The last thing he saw was the smile on her luscious lips and the sparkle in her eyes. The last thing he heard was her voice. 'Good,' she whispered.

  Jenny waited until Nelson's eyes had closed and he was snoring quietly before she rolled off the rug and got to her feet. She looked down at the sleeping man with contempt. She didn't like blacks – in fact she'd asked for an extra fifty per cent when she saw his photograph. They'd paid – it wasn't as if they were able to bring a racial discrimination lawsuit against her and they knew that Nelson liked blondes. She tied her hair back into a ponytail with an elastic band and dressed quickly. Nelson snored, loudly this time, but there was no need for her to hurry. The drug was good for thirty minutes. Plenty of time. She could taste him and she wanted to spit but knew that wasn't a good idea. He'd almost made her gag when he'd stuck his tongue into her mouth, but she had to keep him turned on so that he wouldn't notice that the champagne had been drugged. She shivered as she realised how close he'd actually come to making love to her. Another couple of minutes and she wouldn't have been able to keep him off her.

  She shuddered at the thought.

  She walked over to the light-switch by the door and turned the main light on and off, then went over to the window and looked out on to the street. The doors of a white Cadillac opened and two heavy-set men got out carrying black nylon holdalls. Jenny opened the door for them. They didn't even acknowledge her presence.

  From her bag she took a pair of medical gloves and snapped them on, then she went to get the champagne bottle and glasses from the sitting room. One of the men had taken a battery-operated vacuum cleaner from his bag and was hoovering Nelson from head to toe as the other man slowly turned him over.

  Jenny washed and dried the glasses in the kitchen and put them back in the cupboard. The empty bottle, the cork, and the foil wrapping went into
her bag. Then she took a piece of kitchen roll and wiped everything in the house she'd touched, including the light-switch. By the time she'd finished, the two men were carrying Nelson's naked body upstairs.

  Sal Sabatino poured himself a glass of wine as he checked the rows of figures in the accounts book. Through his feet he could feel the pulsing beat of a rock group whose name he couldn't even pronounce. He smiled as he totalled up the numbers on his calculator. The Firehouse was a money machine, one of the most popular nightclubs in Baltimore. It was a cash business, perfect for laundering the money his brother made from their New York activities. But it had another advantage – it provided Sabatino with a steady supply of young girls, the sort who'd do practically anything for a noseful of cocaine or a chance to get close to the bands who played at The Firehouse. Sabatino couldn't have been happier. He sipped his wine, enjoying the flavour and the bouquet.

  Like the nightclub, Sabatino wasn't what he appeared to be.

  He had taken an Italian name, he looked more Italian than most Italians and he spoke with a pronounced Italian accent, but in his heart of hearts he could never forget that he was Russian, no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't even Catholic. The small gold crucifix he wore around his neck was as much an affectation as his accent – he'd been brought up as a Muslim, though it had been many, many years since he'd been inside a mosque.

  Sabatino loved to be mistaken for an Italian. A Russian mobster was a joke, a thick clod with lots of muscle and no brains, but an Italian gangster, that was something else. The Italian dons commanded respect. Sabatino craved respect, more than money, more than power, more than sex. It wasn't as if he didn't have an Italian heritage. His father was an Italian soldier who was taken prisoner by the Russians towards the end of the Second World War and shipped to Chechenya, a landlocked province close to the southern border of the old Soviet Union.

  His mother was a young widowed farmworker who had struck up a conversation with a good-looking prisoner-of-war who was digging ditches under the not-very-watchful eye of a bored guard. Somehow the Italian soldier and the Russian peasant had managed to steal a few minutes together, a hurried, frantic coupling with the minimum of undressing, and nine months later Gilani Utsyev had entered the world, kicking, screaming and unwanted. Sabatino's mother told her parents that she'd been raped, and it was only years later that she tearfully confessed that his father wasn't a masked rapist but an Italian soldier who had died of malnutrition in the prisoner-of-war camp.

  Sabatino's childhood was the stuff nightmares are made of.

  He received little or no attention from his mother's family, who considered him an unwanted embarrassment, and he was just two years old when Stalin exiled the whole population of the mini-state to Siberia and Central Asia for allegedly cooperating with the Germans. It wasn't until he was fourteen years old that he and Bzuchar returned to their homeland, their mother dead and buried in the frozen Siberian soil. The lack of a father and the years in exile killed any loyalty the brothers might have had for their family or country. They fled the country shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and were already settled in the United States when Chechenya declared its independence in November 1991.

  It was only when he arrived in America that Gilani felt able to change his name and to adopt the heritage of his unknown father. His mother hadn't asked the prisoner-of-war for his name: Sabatino was above the first Italian restaurant he'd seen in New York. Now the only person to use his old name was his brother. No one else dared to.

  A knock at the door disturbed his day-dreaming. The door opened and one of his bodyguards showed in the blonde. He didn't know her real name, and he didn't need to know. She was a looker. Tall, blonde and statuesque, but about five or six years older than he liked his girls. He preferred them younger and darker, and smaller, but he wouldn't have minded finding out how she'd be in the sack. She looked like she'd be able to crack walnuts with her thighs. His gaze travelled up her body, lingered over her breasts. 'How did it go?' he asked, his eyes finally finishing their journey and reaching her face. Such a pretty mouth, he thought. He would have been tempted to forgo his preference for brunettes, temporarily at least, if it hadn't been for his brother's warning. This one wasn't to be touched.

  'Without a hitch,' she said. 'It might be a day or two before they find him.'

  'That's not a problem,' Sabatino said. He opened a desk drawer and took out a padded envelope. He handed it to her and she slipped it into her bag.

  'Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr Sabatino?' she asked, holding his stare.

  The bodyguard had closed the door. They were alone in the office. Sabatino picked up his glass and swirled the wine around.

  She was coming on to him, there was no doubt about it, but he knew that it wouldn't be free. The girl was a professional, but then again Sabatino wasn't averse to paying for his pleasures.

  She stood straighter, pulling her shoulders back to emphasise her breasts. Erotic thoughts filled his head and she smiled as if to say that she knew what he was thinking and would be quite happy to do whatever he wanted – for the right price. 'Anything?' she added.

  Sabatino grinned. His brother had said don't touch the hired help, and crossing Bzuchar wasn't something a sane man would do, not if he wanted to keep the use of his legs. They might be brothers, but when his temper flared Bzuchar was like a wild animal and lashed out without thinking. Sabatino had once seen him stick a fruit knife in a man's throat because he'd interrupted him while he was telling a joke. Sabatino raised his glass to the girl. 'Some other time, maybe,' he said.

  She nodded. 'Are you sure?'

  Sabatino's face hardened. Flirting was one thing, but now she seemed to be playing with him. He wondered if his brother had asked her to test him, to see whether or not he'd disobey him.

  'Get out,' he hissed. 'Get the fuck outta my office.'

  He turned his back on her and didn't see her leave. His hand was clenched around the stem of the wine glass and as the door closed it snapped. The broken glass fell to the floor, leaving a small cut on his hand. Blood oozed from the wound and Sabatino sucked it, like a baby feeding from its mother's breast.

  Mersiha woke to the sound of blackbirds singing in the trees behind the house. She lay for awhile listening to them. It brought back memories of when she was a child, back when she shared a bedroom with Stjepan. He could mimic their song, and he'd often lie in his bed whistling to them and laughing as they called back. Mersiha had tried to copy him, but she could never get the birds to reply to her.

  Later, after her parents had been killed, the blackbirds were still around, still singing. Whenever the rattle of gunfire or the whistle and roar of mortars died away, the birdsong would always return. By the time she was twelve, Mersiha had seen hundreds of dead bodies, but she'd never seen a dead bird. She thought that the birds had some mystic power that enabled them to escape the death and devastation that ravaged her homeland, until Stjepan explained that the dead birds were swiftly carried off by predators and eaten.

  Mersiha closed her eyes and concentrated on the birds, declaring their territorial ambitions with songs so beautiful it made her want to cry. If only humans would fight wars by singing, she thought. Then her parents wouldn't be dead and Stjepan would still be around to sing to the birds for her. She felt tears prick her eyes and she fought to contain them.

  'Mersiha!' She heard her name being called and for a wild moment she imagined that it was her brother. 'Mersiha!' It was her father, calling her to breakfast.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table munching on one of {Catherine's low-fat, high-fibre rabbit-food breakfast cereals when she arrived. {Catherine put a plate of wholemeal toast and a mug of hot tea in front of Mersiha. 'When you've finished this I've got a surprise for you,' she said.

  'Yeah?' Mersiha said, buttering her toast and smearing her father's precious Silver Shred over it. The lemon marmalade was hard to find in the States and he had friends in Scotland regularly send him over
supplies, along with PG Tipa tea bags, Heinz baked beans and salad cream. She deliberately spread the marmalade thickly because she loved the look of anguish in his eyes, like a child threatened with losing his favourite toy. He raised a warning eyebrow and Mersiha giggled. 'Is it a pony?' she asked in a little-girl's voice. She winked at her father.

  'No, it's not a pony,' Katherine said, flicking a tea towel at her.

  'So what's the surprise?'

  Katherine tutted. 'If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise, would it?'

  'I guess not.' She munched on her toast and sipped her tea. 'How's the diet, Dad?' she asked, nodding at the bowl of cereal.

  Freeman curled his lip and growled like a dog. Buffy sat up in the corner, her ears up. 'It's delicious,' he said.

  'It's good for you,' Katherine said, pouring herself a cup of black coffee.

  'Hmmm. This advice is brought to you from a heavy smoker,'

  Freeman said.

  'I'm quitting,' she retorted.

  'When?' Freeman asked.

  'Soon. Don't press me.' She sat down next to him, ruffling his hair.

  'You could always smoke the cereal,' Mersiha suggested.

  {Catherine pointed her index finger at her and she pretended to duck an imaginary blow. 'Uh-oh, the waggly finger.'

  Freeman smiled and Mersiha could see that he was pleased with the banter, that he was happy again now that she and Katherine appeared to be friends. She felt the smile harden on her own lips as she realised how false it all was. She could make jokes, she could laugh with Katherine, but at the back of her mind was the image of Katherine in bed with Dr Brown, sweating and moaning and betraying her father. She realised she was frowning and she forced herself to relax. The important thing, the only thing that mattered, was that her father was happy.