by P. J. Adams
“So what are you telling me, Fearless?”
“Don’t take the piss,” he said. “Don’t rock the boat. And don’t do anything until you understand what you’re getting into. You’re the new boy here. You know nothing.”
“I’m a fast learner.”
“But are you fast enough?”
“I want it.”
Fearless looked away, his gaze roaming across the harbor. “I know,” he said, finally. “I know.” Then: “I can put in a word, son. There’s an organization I know. Far better than going it alone. A bit of security work, a chance to prove your worth and move up. Think of it as career development.”
I was shaking my head already. “No. Nothing organized.” Get tied to a gang and you’d never get out. I understood that much, at least. “Just a bit of freelancing. Chance to test the water, you know? I don’t care what it is. Door work... anything.”
Fearless shrugged. “Whatever,” he said. “I’ll put some feelers out. That’s all I can say, okay?”
“That’s all I want, man.” A pause, then I added, “Thanks.”
That embrace again, the one that made me feel like a small child back in London, the aftershave and sweat and beer, and then it was done and we were heading back inside.
A short time later I found myself back out in the street again.
And so was she.
Imelda. Trouble.
Midday, the late summer sun blazing down, the streets smelling of dust and sea and flowers and when I glanced across she was there.
Standing by a wall, one foot slightly forward as if she was posing for a glamour shoot. The way she stood emphasized that long slit in the red skirt, the shoes. She looked incongruous in broad daylight, dressed for the night, dressed for a world that was sultry and sensuous and maybe just a little bit seedy.
She looked fucking gorgeous and she was clearly waiting for me.
2
Lee Bailey took her quite by surprise.
Imelda Sanchez was aware of him as soon as he entered Fearless’s bar. He was one of those guys who had a presence. Not the cocky machismo of the local Spanish gangsters who still thought they owned the place. Not the brutish thuggery of a Bulgarian – Hristo had colored her view of any man of his nationality.
A natural thing.
An aura.
Imelda was a firm believer in first impressions. In that first glimpse, before the barriers fell into place and a person had started to project how they wanted the world to see them, you saw something unique. A distillation of a person. A glimpse of the soul, if you will.
Her first impression of Lee Bailey was natural power. That was obvious just from the shape of him, of course: his arms were as thick as her thighs, his waist and hips slim but his chest broad. He looked like a street fighter, an impression enhanced by the tattoos – tribal markings down his arms, and when he turned something on the back of his neck going up under the short crop of dark hair that covered his head.
But it was more than the superficial. He had an inner strength. Something she could see in those gray-blue eyes. He was sharp, inquisitive, his eyes jumping around the room, taking it all in, focusing on each person in turn, assessing everything. He was a man with depths, but also one who automatically assessed risks wherever he was.
She knew all about that.
She’d been around men like this since before puberty.
So... her first impressions of Lee Bailey in the few seconds between him appearing in the doorway and walking across to join Fearless Lloyd were of power and strength, a natural fighter who’d been around. A survivor.
And, more than any of that, she knew instinctively he was a man she was going to see again.
§
She’d only been at Fearless’s bar, Los Cojones, for a few minutes.
She’d come to talk to the owner because he was someone who knew everything and everyone here in Puerto Libre. He was a man who put things together and came up with solutions.
And more than anything she needed solutions right now.
But when it came to it...
“It’s Hristo,” she said, before breaking away to sip at her Zen mojito.
“Ain’t it always,” said Fearless, and straight away she realized she would get nowhere. She didn’t know what she wanted to ask him, what she thought he might be able to do.
And with that thought she knew she was lying to herself.
I want you to have him killed. You know the right people. You can do it. And your life would be a whole lot better without him around, too.
Words that had sounded easy as she rehearsed them over and over in her head since last night’s fight. The more she’d practiced, the more she had thought it the only solution, the logical solution.
The world wouldn’t miss Hristo Markov, and the poli wouldn’t want to get involved at any more than a cursory level, if that. To them he would be just another foreign gangster tidied away.
And Imelda certainly wouldn’t miss him: the Hristo she thought she’d fallen for a year before had proved to be an illusion, a deceit. Not the one who’d held her by the throat last night in the Hermanos bar, while all his pandillero buddies sat around laughing and encouraging him.
The Hristo who had hissed in her face, “You listen good, Imelda. You listen good. There’s only one way you ever get to leave me, you hear?”
And his meaning had been perfectly clear.
She’d stepped back when he released her, laughed in that way she had developed to deflect the tensions. Said that of course she would never leave him, where had he got that idea from? She’s just a hot-head sometimes, didn’t he like that about her? And so face was superficially saved and they had both known exactly where they stood.
It was reputatsiya for Hristo. Reputation. Honor. Character. Imelda was part of his reputatsiya – a glamorous trophy. It was a long time since their relationship had been anything more than a superficial thing. He could fuck around all he liked, but it was always Imelda he wore on his arm. She was like his Ferrari, and his penthouse apartment here in the Puerto.
He didn’t want her any more, but he would never let her go. It was pride. Greed. It was reputatsiya.
And her life had gotten so damned miserable that, lying alone in her bed that night, it had seemed like a perfectly logical thing to come here to Los Cojones and ask Fearless Lloyd to set up a hit.
“So what is it, darling?” Fearless said, as she sat there sipping at her drink and failing to squeeze the words out. “I’m guessing it’s not a shag?”
He laughed at his own joke, and she warmed to him a little. She’d always had the sense he was one of the good guys, in a world where everything came in shades of evil.
She shook her head. “Oh, you know,” she said, and it was clear he didn’t. Uncertain, she twisted at the ring on her left thumb, the one Hristo had given her before she had come to realize what a mistake he was. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Es estúpido.”
“Nah,” said Fearless. “Whenever someone says that it’s never stupid. They’re dodging the issue. They’re dismissing something that matters to them. It’s people that’re stupid, because they won’t say out loud what really matters.”
“You are a philosopher.”
“Nah. I’ve just been around, darling, that’s all. So what is it? What’s Hristo done?”
He nodded at her then, eyes directed below her face, and she raised a hand to her neck automatically. She’d covered the bruises with concealer, but he must have spotted something.
“You should get away from him, sweetheart. That bastard’s never going to be any good for you.”
But... she could never get away from Hristo. Not unless she was in a coffin. He’d made that clear enough last night.
She looked away.
She didn’t have the words. Didn’t even know what she wanted any more.
That was when she spotted him. The ripped guy standing in the doorway, looking around the interior of Los Cojones, assessing everything.
She’d kept her back to him as he approached. She knew he’d be looking, and she knew that flash of bare back and the long slit up the side of her skirt would always do all the work.
Sure enough, when she finally turned, his eyes were roaming greedily back up to meet hers.
Much later, looking back, she knew this moment was the point where everything had become inevitable, but at the time it was all still unknown, a moment loaded only with potential.
She met his look, held it, broke it. She was the one in control of that moment, and that was how she liked it.
For all that this stranger was a hard man, every one of them had a weakness, and that weakness could nearly always be Imelda Sanchez if that was what she wanted.
Despite that flash of soul in his eyes, she thought he was like all the rest. Hristo was her benchmark now, for better or for worse, and by that standard all men were bastards. But then this newcomer stepped back to let her pass. He didn’t have to do it, he just did.
There was something about that gesture. Or a hint of something, at least.
She met his look again, smiled, connected.
It was like that first impression, a moment of understanding.
A thrill.
She left, not hurrying to get outside. Not bothering to look back merely to confirm that his gaze had followed her and knowing all the time that it had.
§
She hadn’t always been like this.
Hadn’t always been scared of her own shadow, trapped into an empty shell of a life with a man she could never even respect, let alone love.
She was a strong woman. Independent.
It had taken Hristo to beat that out of her.
Growing up, she’d had to be a fighter. She’d pretty much lived on the streets from the age of ten, her mother only a distant memory – either an unfaithful, abandoning slut or dead, depending on which story you chose to believe from Imelda’s unreliable drunken bum of a father.
She’d spent much of her youth selling counterfeit goods and pulling short cons on the seafront in Playa de las Américas in Tenerife.
Her mainstay had been working with the African sellers of tourist tat – brightly colored nylon wigs, pirated DVDs and CDs, fake designer watches and sunglasses. The sellers would be up in the faces of the tourists while Imelda picked their pockets and bags. Then, when she signaled she had something, one of the sellers would shout “Aguas” – local slang for Watch out – pretending there were police approaching, and they would split up and run. If the victim ever realized they’d been robbed they’d nearly always chase the sellers and not innocent little Imelda who would loiter coolly nearby.
If she ever did get into trouble she learned quickly that tears would do the trick. Then, as womanhood blossomed, a combination of childish tears and playing on an older man’s uncomfortable awareness of that pubescent blossoming worked even better.
Not long after that she realized her looks opened far more doors than childish innocence had. The scope for compromising drunken men on vacation was endless. She got so good that sometimes just standing too close would be all it took, the victim’s guilty mind – and perhaps past history – taking over as he became desperate for his wife or girlfriend not to read anything into an entirely innocent situation.
All she needed was a look, a brush of the hand, a pressing of legs, and she could reel him in, play him, trap him. They would sometimes, quite literally, throw money at her to make her leave while all the time they wanted her to stay.
She wasn’t proud of her tactics.
But she was a survivor and that was surely something to be proud of.
§
Outside, the midday sun had turned the narrow street into a furnace. You never knew how it would be at this time of the year – if the otherwise constant sea breeze fell away the temperature could leap a good ten degrees or more.
Imelda crossed the street and paused in the shade.
She checked her cellphone, but there were no messages, which was always good these days. That, in itself, illustrated how her life had changed: that her phone should be seen as a threat, a source of summons, rather than a channel to friends and opportunities.
She didn’t realize she was waiting for the stranger at first.
She didn’t mean anything by it. She was just curious, maybe. Nothing more than that.
She didn’t have any kind of plan. Didn’t even intend to talk to him.
And she knew there was something in her head that was in denial. She just didn’t understand exactly what it was denying...
He emerged into the sunlight a short time later; his conversation with Fearless hadn’t lasted long. Business, perhaps. She wondered what kind of business he was involved in, although it wasn’t hard to guess.
He paused and looked left and right in that way of his. Checking for threats.
Did he know how good he looked in jeans and black t-shirt, she wondered?
He spotted her, and she blinked and averted her gaze – a trick she’d learned long ago: if you just look away they see the movement of your eyes; blink and you can conceal it.
In her peripheral vision she saw him approaching.
A moment later he stood before her.
She met his look, raised an eyebrow.
He was a fighter, but he had no defenses right now.
“Kiss me,” she said, simply.
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows. For his mouth to open, close. For him to lick his lips, briefly.
“Or don’t you want to? Okay. Your chance has gone. It’s been nice talking. ¡Adiós!”
And she turned, and walked away. Not too fast, not too slow. No looking back.
She didn’t even understand whether she wanted him to pursue her or not.
It was a dangerous game she was playing, whatever that game might be.
A deadly game, if Hristo should ever become aware of it.
Tres. Dos. Uno. A scuffing of feet behind her.
She took the next right, plunging into cool shade, buildings cramming in from either side of the narrow alleyway.
She had expected him to follow, but didn’t expect the rough grip on her arm, the easy way he turned her.
Flashing back to the night before, her first response was to fight. No man could ever...
Then she checked her reaction, stifled it. She’d invited him. She’d toyed with him, and he’d been man enough to rise to the challenge. Man enough to...
She found herself standing with her back against a rough wall, his hand still on her arm.
She’d wanted this. Right from the first moment she’d set eyes on him.
She didn’t know if it was a revenge thing, or a simple act of liberation, of choice, but she knew she had created this situation. She had controlled it just as she had controlled men since she’d had to choose to do whatever was needed in order to survive back on the streets of Tenerife.
He was staring, eyes locked on hers.
Was he trying to read her? No... he was waiting for her to meet his look, waiting for her to acknowledge that he had taken over.
She met those blue-gray eyes, her heart thumping hard and fast in her chest.
And only then did he dip his head in, and press hard lips against hers.
His free hand moved to her waist, pulled her body against his.
She put a hand up to the back of his head, that short scrub of hair, and her body molded itself to his, her soft curves to his hard frame.
She hadn’t expected this. She’d been in control, been toying with him.
She hadn’t expected to just... melt.
And she hadn’t expected... the pressure of his powerful body against her... the way he held her...
The hardness of hip and thigh against her. That rock-hard bulge in his jeans.
All this from nowhere.
She’d never understood what it was to be swept from her feet, but now she was clinging onto him as his tongue pressed home.
She felt an incredible n
eed. An urgency.
She didn’t react like this. Ever.
She’d never had a hair-trigger response.
She needed wooing, seduction.
To go from nothing to this thing that was happening, the tightness, the hunger. The bolts of pleasure racing through her body from every point of contact.
She was...
Oh my God, she was...
She clung to him, dragging her mouth away from his, burying her face in the hollow between neck and shoulder, sure he must be able to feel the rapid, fluttering of her inner muscles where he pressed against her.
She’d never done that.
Never reacted like that.
She pushed away from him. Disentangled herself. Smoothed her clothes down and hurried away down the alley and back to the street. Not looking back. Not daring to look back. And still not understanding what had just taken place.
3
I don’t do spontaneity. It’s too risky.
I size things up. Work out the risks and opportunities in advance.
I know I look like a scrapper, all muscle and attitude and not much else, but despite the impression I might give, I’m a thinker, too. I’d never have lasted a week in the thick of London’s gang wars if that wasn’t how I worked.
So just walking across that street wasn’t the kind of thing I ever did. Going up to her, not even having a plan, not knowing what to say or do. Not knowing how to react when she met my look and said, “Kiss me.”
It should have been simple, right?
A woman like Imelda saying a thing like that?
How could you not?
But I hesitated a split-second too long, she smiled as if it was all a joke, and said, “Or don’t you want to? Okay. Your chance has gone. It’s been nice talking. ¡Adiós!”
Following and kissing her was the forbidden apple, the bridge burned behind me. No going back. No way out once you’ve taken a bite.
Jesus, man...
Had the sun got to me, or something?
Here I was, setting myself up for a return to the game, trying to find that focus again, to become an operator, and...