by P. J. Adams
The kiss. Man, the kiss.
Her lips were so soft and her mouth tasted of mint and ginger from the drink she’d had in Los Cojones.
And then... I wasn’t really sure what happened. She just kind of melted into my arms, held herself there as if she might never let go. For a moment I thought she was going to cry. Then I thought... She shuddered, gave a soft gasp, stiffened...
She peeled herself away from me, straightened, smoothed her clothes down. Up to now she’d been in command, unflustered, but for a few seconds she seemed thrown, as if she hadn’t expected me to take her up on her instruction, hadn’t expected anything like this...
And then she turned and walked away, back out into the sunlit street. Walking not too fast, not too slow.
Not looking back.
In control again.
§
I didn’t know what to make of it.
Didn’t understand.
Was left with a head full of racing thoughts and an erection straining at my jeans. An aching hardness.
When I blinked, my mind filled with snapshot memories, fragments. The flawless skin of her back, those long legs, the perfect pout of those red lips.
That wasn’t doing me any good at all.
I went back out into the street, and instantly the sun burned hot on my exposed arms. I reached up and scratched my scalp, still not accustomed to the short crop of hair I’d grown to cover the too-distinctive skull tatt on the back of my head.
I found a side-street that cut through to the waterside. Started to run, even though I wasn’t dressed for it. A fast jog, almost a sprint. Way faster than the pace I set on the treadmill in Fearless’s gym.
My feet hurt as they pounded the concrete with only the flimsy protection of my thin Converse soles, and within seconds the sweat was streaming down my body and plastering the t-shirt to my back.
I dipped my head and increased the pace, and by the time I reached my small apartment to the east side of Puerto Libre I was gasping for air, and distracted, albeit briefly, from the raging need inside.
§
For a few days I thought Fearless had forgotten about our little conversation. Or, rather, that he had discreetly decided not to follow up. Maybe he’d mentioned it on one of those long-distance calls to my old man in Wandsworth Prison, and Dad had told him not to help me back into the game, or maybe he’d just made that judgment himself.
But then the call came through and I felt bad for doubting him. Other than my brother Dean, Fearless was the one person out here I’d trust with my life.
He’d taken me at my word when I said I didn’t mind what it was – I just needed to be doing something again. It was a good few years since I’d stood door at a bar, but hey.
The look for security guys was a lot more casual out here and I’d modeled myself on Pablo at Los Cojones: slate gray pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, top button undone.
I showed up half an hour early and sat at a table inside, checking out the place.
Hermanos was a wine and cocktail bar on the waterfront, a couple of blocks along from Fearless’s bar. It was split over two levels, and fairly respectable on the surface, but I spotted straight away there was a lot more to it than first met the eye.
I fairly quickly spotted at least a couple of dealers staking out their territory, a few gangster faces and their entourage flashing their money around, and it was obvious the place followed what was a common model here: a bunch of rooms out at the back rented out to working girls.
When the appointed time came and I introduced myself, another of my suspicions was quickly confirmed: just like the faces hanging out here, the management were Eastern European. After all the old run-ins with Russian gangs back in London that immediately set alarm bells ringing, as I stood there in one of the back offices being eyed up by the bar’s manager.
“Fearless says you’re good,” said the guy, tipping back in his chair. He had an air of money about him, and I quickly decided he was more than just a bar manager. He was skinny, in a pale gray suit, aviator shades pushed back on his head retaining a sweep of dark brown hair and revealing small, staring eyes. “Says you’re family.”
I nodded, said nothing. I’d learned long ago that in a situation like this no-one needed a fucking Oscar speech.
“We put you on door tonight, yes? See how you do. Take it from there, yes?”
I nodded again.
“Anything you need to know?”
“The dealers,” I said. “Three of them, lower floor bar. You want them gone, or do we turn a blind eye?”
The Eastern European – Hungarian, Rumanian, perhaps – smiled. “They good. We know them. No more though, you hear? We keep this place clean, yes?”
I nodded once more. Clean was a flexible concept. No dealers apart from our dealers; no hookers apart from ours. I understood.
This really wasn’t much different to a hundred similar clubs in London.
§
It was a quiet night until Jack the Knife showed up.
I stood door with a guy called Georgi for a time. Control the door and you run a safe club – that was always a reliable rule. Things were quiet and it really didn’t need both of us, but I’d understood straight away that they were checking me out – Georgi wasn’t the kind of guy to do door security unless there was special reason.
The only real incidents were when we turned away a Scandinavian guy who was almost certainly a dealer, only confirmed when he tried to bribe his way in with a couple of wraps of coke. And later, a rowdy but probably harmless group of drunken Liverpudlians.
Partway through the evening a couple of the girls came out to smoke. Things were clearly quiet for them, too. They were both East European and skinny as whippets. They hovered around me like bees drawn to nectar: the muscle, the new face. It was the same old story.
“You want a tour inside?” said one of them, and I knew exactly what she meant. I was tempted. It had been a while, and the sexual tension stirred up by that strangely intense encounter with Imelda a few days ago still hadn’t worked itself out of my system.
But there was something in her look. Something lost.
These girls worked by ‘renting’ rooms from the bars, paying fees they could never hope to cover no matter how hard they worked. I remembered Fearless’s story of the guy who’d lost his balls and was forever tied by debt to one of the gangs. These girls’ position wasn’t that dissimilar.
I shook my head, smiling. “Working,” I said, a man of few words again.
“Maybe later?” She was kind of cute. An angular face, piercing blue eyes, pale blonde hair tied sharply back.
But even so, she had that look of being slightly lost.
I shrugged, not liking myself for the way I automatically kept my options open.
Not long after that, a guy showed up alone, making for the door.
Georgi wasn’t paying much attention by now. It’s easy for the concentration to wander, after a few hours on the door on a quiet night like this. Georgi was on something, too, which didn’t help. He had the fired-up look of a ’roid user, but there was something else, too. Speed or coke, probably.
I stepped into the new guy’s path. He was a couple of inches taller than me, but as skinny as the girls who’d just gone back inside.
“Whoa,” I said softly. People are often surprised that I’m not louder, but it’s not shouting that gives you authority, it’s attitude. This guy got that immediately, and raised his hands as if in surrender.
“Not in here, Jack,” I said.
Immediately Georgi was at my shoulder. “You know this guy, Lee? What’s up, eh?”
There was a flicker of recognition in Jack’s eyes then, which impressed me, because he was just as off his head tonight as he was the last time I’d seen him, pushing his gear in a club in London’s West End.
Back in the day we’d had one or two encounters, me and Jack. Enough for me to know his nickname came from the vintage Italian stiletto switchblade he kept t
ucked into the waistband of his pants, and enough for me to know the irony of his nickname was that he’d lost his edge a while back, around the time his various habits took over.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Even more so now, perhaps, as the drugs took away the layer of sensible restraint.
I’d calmed the situation down, though, and Jack was on the point of leaving. I had it all under control until Georgi stepped between us, and got into Jack the Knife’s face as if he was looking for a fight.
I saw the change in Jack’s eyes, the muscle twitch.
I’d have stopped him, but Georgi was in the way, and before I could do anything Jack had the knife out, the blade glinting in the streetlights as he waved it around.
Even now, Georgi didn’t seem to take the threat seriously, swaying back just a little, leering at Jack.
In the second or two all this had taken, everyone on the street had turned, sensing trouble. More faces lined the bar window, everyone spoiling for a fight, something to liven up the evening.
“He’s off his head, Georgi,” I said softly. “I know him. He’s–”
But even as I spoke, Georgi took a step forward, calling Jack’s bluff.
Jack was in no frame of mind for games, though. His equations were far simpler than that. He saw Georgi advance, and reacted. His fist drew back, like a boxer preparing for a short-arm jab.
I could see what was coming, as if in slow motion.
Could see that was no punch because he was gripping the knife.
One step forward, a short backlift, and I swung my fist into Jack’s face with all my 220 pounds of weight behind it.
It was almost like something out of a cartoon. I swear his feet lifted off the ground as his head jerked back and then his body followed.
I heard the meaty thud as he hit the cobblestones, the clatter of the knife landing somewhere nearby, the collective gasp of the onlookers.
Jack the Knife was out cold, and my fist had that satisfying ache of the impact.
My heart raged.
I wanted to follow through, make sure the bastard stayed down.
I’d been away from this game for too long.
But I stopped myself.
As I say, I’m not just about the muscle, the fists. I’m a thinker, too. And just as I knew when to let instinct kick in and my fists do the work, I understood when it was time to think about things, and over-rule those instincts.
Georgi turned to look at me, the world still feeling as if it were in slow-motion.
“The fuck was that?” he said.
§
I finished at midnight, even though the club would be open until much later. It was just a try-out, after all.
As instructed, I went to the bar and one of the girls poured me a tall beer. I was ready for it, but not here. The place didn’t feel right. I just wanted to pick up the few notes that were owed me and I’d be on my way.
The guy I’d spoken to before extracted himself from a small group at a nearby table and came over to join me. He had the look, and that was one reason I didn’t want to stick around. I didn’t care that he was a gangster, but he had dangerous eyes – an anger, a coke stare that had only grown more intense as the evening grew old.
“Georgi, he tell me you did good,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Bit of a scrap, that’s all,” I said. “It was mostly quiet.”
The guy nodded.
“You want maybe a little more work? Something regular?”
I shook my head, and his eyes widened immediately. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to being turned down.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just freelancing at the moment. I don’t want to get... involved in anything.”
Right from the off, it had been clear that this evening’s try-out was exactly what I’d told Fearless I didn’t want. Career development, he’d called it. He’d set me up to try out for work with one of the East European gangs. It was obvious this guy’s business operations extended far beyond a single bar.
Once you get involved in an operation like that, there would never be an easy way out, and it was certainly not something I’d consider until I was damned sure I was comfortable with who they were and what they did.
I didn’t need my career developing. I just needed to get that buzz back.
“You don’t know what I’m offering.”
I smiled, an easy relaxed smile that nearly always served to disarm. “Like I say, I’m not looking for a regular gig. I’m sorry if I gave any other impression. Just getting a feel for things again. I’m happy to listen if something comes up – you know now that I’m a safe pair of hands. But I’m new here, just finding my way around.”
He backed down. Maybe the smile had defused things, maybe he thought I was playing hard to get, maybe he thought he already had me hooked and just had to take his time reeling me in. Whatever.
He stepped forward, took my hand and shook it firmly.
“I like you,” he said. “And there’s not many people I like, you know? Here’s your money, and a little extra for your trouble, yes?”
He handed over a fold of notes, which I pocketed without checking.
“You stay for another drink?” He indicated his group at the nearby table.
“No. Thanks, but no.” And with that I turned away and made for the door, hoping this guy didn’t think he’d somehow bought a stake in me.
4
Imelda had known straight away Lee Bailey was a man she would see again. Even before he’d taken her by the arm, almost brutally pushed her up against that wall and kissed her. Even before all those different elements had somehow combined – the hard physical contact, the kiss, the intensity, the sense of being overpowered – and she’d clung to him, gasping and dizzy and almost overcome by the abruptness of her own response.
No-one had ever made her come like that before. She wouldn’t have believed it possible until it happened.
It was purely a physical thing. She understood that.
An attraction. A magnetism. One that was clearly mutual.
It was also perhaps the most reckless thing she’d ever done.
Waiting for him in full view.
The kiss.
Any sane person would have drawn the line at that, if they’d even let it go that far.
Any sane person would have clamped down on the thoughts that followed over succeeding days.
The memories were fine, perhaps. Something to roll over in your mind as you lay alone in bed. Fuel for the imagination. Fuel for the dreams, for more than once she had woken in the early hours, hot and panting, a wet heat between her legs.
But to even think there might be a re-run. That there might be something more.
That was utter madness.
And to sit here at a table in the street outside Los Momentos, toying with her drink, just waiting... Waiting because you knew the man you had learned was Lee Bailey from London – one of the Bailey Boys, of whom she had never heard but who clearly had a reputation in their home town – would likely pass this way after his trial shift at Hermanos.
That went beyond insanity.
That was a death wish... for both of them.
§
Los Momentos was still busy, even after midnight, as many bars were here on the Costa.
By the time Imelda saw Lee Bailey, he had already spotted her. That thing of his, assessing everything, always trying to keep one step ahead.
His eyes were on her, and she tried to be strong enough not to check again, to cling confidently to the knowledge that he must still be looking.
She sipped at her drink, and allowed herself to peer over the rim of the glass.
He was walking by.
He’d seen her and decided not to react.
That was the worst thing of all.
Humiliating.
And, in many ways, such a blessed relief. Just let him walk by, let this madness pass.
Then he glanced across, made eye contact, and that w
as it.
“You’re waiting for me.” His voice was so soft, a total contrast to everything else about his manner.
“I drink here often.”
“Alone at half past midnight.”
“I like my own company, and the night is wasted on sleep.”
He lowered himself into a chair across the table from her.
“We cannot do this,” she said, and she meant it. Now that him sitting here before her was a reality, it brought home just how wrong it was. How risky.
His mouth opened as if to speak, then he stopped himself. She’d thrown him. He tried again. “Do what? What are we doing?”
“This.” As if he should somehow understand what was in her mind.
He turned his head, sweeping left to right. “It seems harmless enough to me,” he said.
“It is dangerous,” she said. “If you are seen here, drinking with me... I am the poisoned chalice.”
“I survived kissing you.”
She looked away, felt color rising to her cheeks.
“How was your evening at Hermanos, Señor Bailey?”
His eyes narrowed a little at that. For a man who assessed every possible risk, her use of his name and knowledge of his evening were warning signs.
“It is okay,” she went on. “I asked about you. I wanted to know what kind of a man would do such a thing.” As if the kiss had been all his doing.
“And what did you find out?”
“That you and your brother came here from London earlier this year. That you have a reputation: a hard man, not to be crossed. That you have just spent the evening working for Hristo Markov, who is a man who would not hesitate to have you killed if he saw you here now.”
He put his hands on the table. “I’m getting up now,” he said. “And I’m leaving.”
“That would be sensible.”
But they had already gone way beyond sensible.
He didn’t make any further move to leave.
“We go inside, yes?” she said. “Sitting out here, it scares me a little.”
§
They passed through the public bar to a smaller room. A few people sat at the handful of tables, but it was a lot more private than sitting in the main bar, or at the outside tables.