by Declan Burke
Rossi
'Sicily's an island?' Rossi said crossing the observation deck, the breeze billowing out the fatigues so he flapped like an old sail. 'Since when?'
'There was an earthquake about two years back,' Sleeps said, looking to Mel. 'That right, Mel? Two years ago?'
'I think it was three,' she said.
'You being inside,' Sleeps said, 'you probably didn't hear about it. Anyway, it broke off from the rest of Italy, damn near sank. Terrible, it was. Millions dead.'
'They tell you nothing inside,' Rossi groused. 'I mean, I prob'ly lost actual family, cousins and shit.' Elbowing in to the rail now, flashing some dead-eye to the guy about to complain, this asshole in a straw sunhat. Letting him know, fair warning, you don't fuck with Rossi Francis Assisi Callaghan. Backed him off a little, got some elbow room, talking space, then plonked down the Futon, put a knee on it and leaned his elbows on the rail. The others huddling in close, Mel in the middle smelling like, it was the only way Rossi could describe it, the Arabian Nights. He up-jutted his chin at the approaching port. 'And this earthquake's why Palmero looks like Calcutta's evil twin.'
'That's not, um, Palmero,' Mel said. 'Not as such.'
'No?'
'It's Palermo's port. The actual city is way back in the hinterland.'
'The what now?'
Rossi feeling beat down, not firing on all cinders, the buzz from the Uzi draining out fast. First all the crap at Dubrovnik, Sleeps bollocking on about Italy's world-famous mediaeval city, how it was traditional, you were going to Sicily for the first time, to ferry down the coast from Dubrovnik. Then Mel, gypping on about the blood on her Louis Futon – although Rossi was wondering who she was planning to sleep on a pull-out bed from a bag that size. Midgets, maybe. Plus they were running low on crizz, Sleeps baggsing, being narcoleptic and all, and a greedy bastard to boot, first dibs.
And if that wasn't enough, Melody starts in about smoking in the car, how she's catching cancer secondhand, getting half-stoned, all the time ready to puke. Rossi was tempted to ask her to pay for half the baggie. Except Sleeps backs her up, says the smoke's drying out his eyes, glaucoma just one more toke away. Rossi tried it hanging out the window but the blifter just went off like a Roman candle. He got in one good draw at 120 kph and nearly inhaled the flaming tip, sparks singing his eyelids.
'The hinterland,' Sleeps explained, knuckling his bloodshot eyes and then waving vaguely in the direction of the mountains, 'being the way-back-behind. We get into Patras, the port, we still need to go cross-country to Palmero.'
'The cruise isn't leaving from this Patras?'
'Patras,' Sleeps said, 'is where the industrial stuff goes in and out. Oil-tankers and whatnot. For cruise liners? It's Palmero.'
'Fuck.'
'We still got nine, ten hours,' Sleeps said. 'Plenty of time. Right, Mel?'
Mel nodded.
'Okay,' Rossi said to Sleeps, 'so the Beamer – I say we booby-trap it. Wire the fucker up to the gas tank so it shorts out when they turn the key.' He gave a wristy twist. 'Ka-boom-ski.'
'And fry someone,' Sleeps said. 'Start a manhunt.'
'What, I'm a moron now? I'll be ringing it in, Sleeps. Fair warning.'
'This making it a booby-trap everyone knows about. Besides, you issued many bomb-warnings in Italian lately?'
'You got any better suggestions?'
'Sure. We leave it sitting where it is. Walk away.'
'And get us nabbed on forensics?'
'Forensics?'
'One eyelash'll do it,' Rossi warned. 'I read up when I was inside, DNA, body fluids, all this. You think you're free and clear, then bang, they've matched a sweaty spot to the crack of your ass and you're looking at five-to-ten, hard time, State pen. Maybe Angola.'
Sleeps made goggles of his fingers, stretched out his eye-sockets. 'First they'd need to know it was us driving the Beamer,' he said. 'This being a motor we boosted the other side of the continent. Then they'll need enough reason to chase us into, y'know, Sicily. Which I think is like a foreign jurisdiction for Italy.'
'We got one of their Uzis,' Rossi pointed out. He adjusted the forage cap so it sat low on the turban, angled rakish over one eye. 'Plus, a uniform.'
'Sure,' Sleeps said. 'But that's not exactly something that'll get them swearing out extradition warrants. More likely they'll want to keep quiet about that one.'
'I'm just saying, we don't want to take any chances we don't have to.'
'Other than, say, abducting a cop, or a soldier, we're still not sure which. Then smuggling his assault rifle across the border, this while we're muling enough gak to chill the Foreign fucking Legion. With,' he inclined his head at Mel, 'a volunteer hostage in tow.'
'I'm talking about taking chances,' Rossi said with quiet dignity, 'not what they call adapting to circumstance.'
'Which reminds me,' Sleeps said. 'The guy in the trunk – we booby-trapping him too?'
'Fuck's the point in that? The car's already wired. Like, he's in the fuckin thing.'
'Sure. But you're tipping 'em off, remember? So's no one gets hurt, they don't call in any choppers, send an aircraft carrier steaming up from the gulf.'
'Meaning,' Rossi said, seeing it now, 'the guy survives, he can identify us, right? In a line-up.'
'On the remote chance we get ourselves caught, yeah.'
'Be just like a copper,' Rossi said, 'to squeal.'
'It's not so much squealing when you're a cop,' Sleeps said, 'as it's gathering evidence.'
'This is how bogey a cop is.'
'It's his job, Rossi. How he gets paid.'
'You're saying he'll do it.'
'Why not? Why wouldn't he say it was us anyway, even if he didn't know us from the Osmonds. See if it was me, I'm due a rocket up my hoop over some tourists swiped my Uzi when I was blind drunk some night? I'd say whatever I was told.'
Rossi, just one of those things, he did his best thinking with a finger in his ear. Now he dug all the way in there, rooted around. 'We can't just dump him over the rail,' he said. The port already close enough to make out cranes, gantries, the ant-like chaos of the docks. 'We'd be seen.'
'Probably, yeah. And besides, if you're going that radical, you could just leave him in the truck, wire the car, tip nobody off. Except we're not doing corpses today.'
'I'm just ruling out options.' Rossi examined the tip of his finger, rolled a little orange ball between the tip of thumb and forefinger, then flicked it into the breeze. 'I say we blind him.'
'Blind him?' Mel said.
'Cuts out the wondering if he knows us. Doesn't matter, he can't see us anyway. We could be the Stooges, he's pawing our faces trying to work out who's Curly.'
'I bags Iggy,' Sleeps said.
'Blind him how?' Mel said.
Rossi had a good tug on his lobe. 'Battery acid? Or, y'know.' He held out his thumbs and twisted them upwards, scooping.
Mel put a hand to her mouth.
'Now you're thinking lateral,' Sleeps said. 'But I got an idea, it's a bit more lateral, where no one has to go blind or get dumped over any rails or burned up.'
Rossi squinted so hard trying to work it around he got a burning sensation where his ear used to be and still came up with only one option. 'You want to let him walk away? A cop?'
'Or soldier,' Sleeps said. 'And it's more that he drives rather than walks.'
Madge
'Still no joy,' Terry said, frowning at his phone, Karen's number ringing out again.
'There won't be,' Madge said, looking for culture through the cab's window. Any culture at all, Madge wasn't fussy. Anything other than half-built high-rise apartment blocks, the only relief an occasional splash of graffiti, reds and yellows mainly. Although, that being in Greek, it wasn't much help. 'I was there when Rossi threw all the phones in the lake,' she said, trying to remember how many times she'd said it now, 'and Karen didn't go after hers. No one did, none of us being kitted out with Scuba gear at the time.' She closed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her
nose. 'Ray hasn't been in touch yet?'
'I told you, this isn't my phone.' Terry had explained last night, in detail, taking most of dinner to do it, how it wasn't such a bright idea to bring your own phone on a trip, leaving a record of how you were taking calls in strange places.
'I know it's not your phone,' Madge said. 'What I'm asking is if he's been in touch back home, left a number you can call.' Like any reasonable person might, she didn't add.
Terry grunted. 'Ray's a bit brighter than that.'
'He's bright,' Madge said. 'And we're bright too, not leaving any traces.' Terry nodded. 'So how come everyone's in the dark?' she said.
Terry glanced across. 'You okay?'
'I'm fine, Terry. Really, you don't have to keep asking. If it does get to the point where I'm not fine, you'll be the first to know. Who else would I tell?'
'Alright then.'
'Although,' she said, 'there is something I've been wanting to say.'
'Yeah?'
All morning she'd been wondering, it being Friday already, when exactly her divorce kicked in. Like, first thing in the morning, office hours? Or noon, for some weird reason? Or was she officially divorced from dead Frank already, since one minute past midnight, something like that?
She said, 'Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, that Frank didn't die of natural causes. That Ray, just for an example, thought Frank might be a loose end that should get knotted up. Or it might even have been Rossi. Or someone we don't know, had a grudge.'
Terry studying her now, the cab pulling up in front of the hotel. 'This is what's bugging you,' he said.
'Well,' she said, 'if that's what happened, and I admit it's a big if, but if that is what happened, then whoever had Frank bumped off basically dropped me in it from a very great height.'
'It'll never stick, Madge. We've been through --'
'That's not the point I'm trying to make, Terry. Just let me finish, okay?'
'Sure.'
'Okay.' Madge, the bellhop coming down the steps now, another guy dressed like a Swiss general opening her door, had this instinct to just keep moving in a straight line for the rest of her life, just keep on circling the globe, repeating nothing. Mistakes, especially. 'I guess what I'm trying to say,' she said, holding up a hand to the Swiss general, pulling the door to again, 'is if I had the person responsible for Frank being dead in front of me now, I think I'd want to tell him it was worth it. Even knowing that I'll have to go back home and act like a loon to try and get off on temporary insanity, wind up all over the front pages, I'm some kind of rabid Black Widow …' She shrugged. 'It'd still be worth it.'
'It would, huh?'
'I don't know if Ray happened to mention it,' she said, 'but Frank date-raped me when I was a kid, sixteen years old. Got me pregnant. Then, when it all came out, he agreed this deal with my father, how we'd have the kid adopted and Frank, once he finished his studies, became a doctor, he'd swing around again and marry me. So, and I don't know if you can understand this, but it was like every time we, y'know, it was like being raped all over again. I mean, it's horrible to think of them this way, but I can't help it …'
'The twins,' Terry said.
'Exactly.'
'I had no idea,' he said.
'No reason you should. But maybe you can appreciate now why it might be worth it, no matter what happens from here on in.'
'I'll bear that in mind,' Terry said. He reached across and patted the back of her hand. 'So what do you want to do?'
Madge considered. 'Right now, we have a couple of hours to kill, I wouldn't mind seeing the Acropolis.'
'No, I mean --'
'I know exactly what you mean, Terry. And I want to see the Acropolis.'
'I'll get directions,' he said.
'That's okay, I hear they put it on top of a hill.' She lifted his hand off hers, then held it for a moment and patted it gently. 'I'll find it on my own.'
Karen
Karen wondered what you might call a bad miracle, what the actual word for it was. Wondering too, Rossi with the brains of a pigeon, if he didn't have the homing instinct too. For Karen, like. She peeked around the corner again, half-hoping she'd hallucinated him, bone-tired and spending way too long in paranoid Ray's company …
Nope. Rossi and the big guy, his muscle Ray'd called him, and the girl, right there halfway down Platform 1, standing in the middle of a pile of luggage made it look like they were playing forts. Rossi jabbing a forefinger at the girl, making a point, wearing, Christ, some kind of army gear now? Karen couldn't keep up, Rossi quick-changing like Cher at Vegas.
She ducked back around the corner and hunkered down beside Anna, the girl curled around the khaki duffel under a wooden bench, the tip of the bushy tail covering her snout. The options being, one, find a cop, a security guard, start a rumour about Rossi smuggling dope. Karen didn't know for sure he was carrying but it was a safe bet, Rossi without dope was a pigeon on one wing. Except that way Karen'd be pulled into it too, making statements, how'd she know Rossi had dope, the whole nine yards.
So, two: use the milling crowd for cover and make a break straight across the platform onto the train, hoping Rossi didn't spot Anna.
Or worse, Anna spot Rossi.
And then? Karen didn't like the idea of hiding out on a train to Athens for four or five hours praying Rossi didn't stumble across them, there being no good way to explain to the relevant authorities why your pet wolf has ripped out the throat of another passenger.
Karen had another peek around the corner, making sure the brave defenders were still inside their little Alamo, then had a rummage through her bag, found Anna's muzzle. Anna whining as Karen strapped it on.
'I know, hon. But it's for your own good. Trust me.'
She sat on the bench with her chin on her palm, trying to work through it. Madge had told Rossi about the cruise, okay, Ray'd got that much right at least. Except Rossi was chasing Karen, the money. Which meant he had no issue with Madge. And, Madge being with Terry, and Ray probably turning up too, to warn them off the cruise, Madge'd be okay. Unless Terry took it bad, blamed Madge for Rossi turning up with his entourage in tow, Elton John in combat fatigues. Karen trying to get a read on Terry from what Ray'd told her, trying to guess which way Terry'd jump. Karen's impression was the guy was a looker not a leaper. Ray'd said, 'To you, yeah. The guy's a pussycat you're not fucking him around. But Terry, he has the horror bad.'
'The horror?'
'Doing time. Some guys get it worse than others. Terry, maybe it's claustrophobia, some shit like that, I don't know, he doesn't like to talk about it. But anyone likely to put him away? Terry'll cut 'em out like that.' He'd snapped his fingers. 'I seen him do it, Karen.' Ray, solemn, placing the tip of a finger in the middle of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose …
So just skipping out, jumping a ferry to the nearest island and lying low until Rossi got himself nabbed, it was only a matter of time, that wasn't a runner either. Karen, patting Anna's flank now, the girl getting restless in the confines of the noisy station, the heat oppressive, believed it was typical – the one time you actually need a guy around, just to bounce some ideas off, he's gone, taking off without so much as a sayonara. Trying now to put herself in Ray's frame of mind, wondering how he'd jump. He'd be cool, she knew that much, looking for ways to slide around the problem, not meet it head-on. One thing Ray was good at, she allowed, was getting his head up, seeing beyond, keeping his eyes on the prize. Giving off not so much attitude as altitude.
She got up and peered around the corner again, wondering if Crockett and Bowie'd been massacred by Santa Anna yet, or if she should just send in her own Anna, be done with it. Then heard, turning back to the bench, the penetrating growl like a tank on rumble-strips that Anna gave off when the girl was particularly pleased with herself.
The guy hunkered down beside bench, tickling Anna under the muzzle, Anna straining her throat so he could get right in there at her chest, had a greying ponytail hanging loose bet
ween his shoulders, a red bandana up top, faded Ramones t-shirt, beige duck pants with zip pockets down the sides. Smiling up at her now, slow and easy, nice even white teeth, the brown eyes warm.
He patted Anna way back on her head. 'Timber wolf, right?'
'Part husky,' Karen said. 'But she's mostly Siberian.'
'Russki, huh?' Pronouncing it 'Rooski', the drawl rolling out the word so far you could've pinned it down, mapped the Mason-Dixon line. When he stood the hems of the duck pants rose up and Karen could see he was going around barefoot. 'Can't say as I've ever met a Russki wolf with an eye-patch before.'
'Something I can do for you?' Karen said.
The guy, maybe it was some kind of sign, an omen, he put a forefinger against his forehead, right above the bridge of his nose. 'She's suffered some hardship. But I'm guessing, I've been watching you with her, it wasn't your doing.'
Karen, she was fritzed, the guy had the drawl going on, those warm brown eyes, a way with Anna she still wasn't sure she believed she'd just seen – anyway, she jerked a thumb in the direction of Platform 1. 'He's over there,' she said.
'Looking for you or her?'
'Me.'
'But you don't want to get into it with him right now.'
Karen, thinking how all she wanted right now was a bath in warm cotton-wool, just nodded.
'Okay,' the guy said. 'So what're your options?'
Sleeps
'The train?' Rossi sweating hard out on Platform 1, flushed from carrying the Louis Vuitton, Rossi designated because he was the one wanted to keep the Uzi, Johnny Priest's gak packed away under what Melody called her skimpies. Although, Sleeps'd noted, skimpy by name, not nature. 'You expect me to take the fuckin train?'
Mel saying how it was only four, five hours to Palermo. Which'd get them in with time to spare, the cruise not leaving until eight.
'All I'm asking,' Rossi said, 'is if I look to you like the Little Loser That Can.'
It had taken a while to sort out the soldier, some kind of Croatian reservist, a National Guard-type, but he finally got it – the Beamer for the Uzi, everyone's a winner. The guy drove a hard bargain, even hungover, sitting there in his skanks in the bowels of the ferry with Rossi waving the .22 around, Rossi adamant he was keeping the fatigues. Eventually Mel'd agreed to buy the guy's ticket back to Dubrovnik to seal the deal, Sleeps pretty sure that if the juicer made it out of Dubrovnik still behind the wheel they'd be putting up a new monument, the eighth wonder of the modern world.