by Blake Banner
I was surprised. I grinned and gave a small laugh. “What are you, my mother?”
Her eyes flicked over my face as she wiped away the caked blood. She smiled again. This time it was softer, warmer. “I hope not.”
I winced as she cleaned the dirt from the gash where Fenninger had hit me with the hoe. She shook her head and sighed. “You got bruises everywhere. And cuts and scratches. I’m not gonna ask what you been doing, but if you’re still on your feet, the other guy must be in hospital. Take your shirt off.”
I raised an eyebrow. “My shirt?”
“You want those cuts to get infected?”
I stood, peeled off my shirt, and she came close, looking me over. I was a mess. She held my eyes with hers for a moment, then said, “You godda get in the shower. You godda clean these cuts. Then I can put cream on them.”
I thought of Abi back in Boston and took another slug of whiskey. I went into the en suite, stripped and stepped into the shower. It hurt, but after the pain had passed it was a relief and all the aches began to ease away. Five minutes later I stepped out of the cubicle and she was standing there, leaning on the doorjamb holding a towel. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She handed me the towel and I dried myself with care. I had more cuts and bruises than I had realized and some of them were still bleeding.
I looked for my pants and my shirt, but she’d removed them. “I’m going to wash them. Now, lie on the bed.” She jerked her head toward the bedroom. She’d turned the lights out and had some candles burning. “I’m gonna take care of you.”
I’m not proud of what happened next, but there is only so much heroism you can expect from a guy in one night. If she’d come at me with an axe I could have fought back, but aromatic oils and candlelight were too much for me. I was weak.
I slept like the dead for five long hours and woke up feeling a lot better. I was alone in the bed, which was a relief, and I got up, showered again and dressed. When I got out to eception I was surprised to see Maria was still at the desk. She saw me glance at my watch and smiled.
“I told Don to come in at midday. I made breakfast. I wanna talk to you.”
I frowned. “What about?”
She jerked her head toward the garden. “I’m coming now.”
I went out and sat at the table in the sun, with the shade of the palms lying across the white wrought iron and the green grass. Maria came out a few minutes later and sat with me. She poured me coffee and as I took it I said, “I’m married. I shouldn’t have done what I did last night. I’m sorry.”
She smiled. “You know how many married men I have had sex with? It must be many hundreds. A few married women too. I am not going to sue you, or have a baby and claim your oil wells in Texas for my child. It happened. Don’t worry about it.”
“Those weren’t the first possibilities that came to my mind.”
She gave a small laugh that was surprisingly pretty. “I seen it done, but you don’t look like a man with oil wells in Texas.”
“You said you wanted to talk. You have a problem you think I can solve?”
She nodded, sipped her coffee and gave me a very direct look. “I’m a whore.” Then she gave a small, one-shouldered shrug. “I was a whore.”
I didn’t know what to say so I sipped my coffee and broke open one of the warm rolls she’d brought out. She was looking up at the palm trees and went on, like she was talking to them instead of me.
“I made a lot of money. A lot of money. Most of the girls waste their money on drugs and drink, whatever it takes to get through the night.” She turned her head to face me and her expression was defiant. “Is some kind of self-hate, self-destructive thing. Society hates a whore, so whores hate themselves.” She gave her head a little shake. “I don’t hate myself. I don’t want to destroy myself. I hated some of the Johns, some of them were OK. I hate the pimps, and I want to destroy some of them.”
She picked up her cup and looked into it, like she was hoping there might be a pimp drowning in there. There obviously wasn’t because she took a sip.
“I took a lot of money from my last pimp.” She nodded to give emphasis to what she’d said. “A lot of money. I was expensive. I’m getting older now, but when I was twenty I was hot—red hot. I used to get invited to a lot of Hollywood parties. You wouldn’t believe some of the names I have screwed.” She grinned. “It reads…” She held up her hands like she was framing a shot. “Like the credits to a big budget block buster movie.”
I laughed. “OK, I believe you.”
“You better believe it, gringo. For ten years I was making more than two thousand bucks on a night. And I made a few movies too, that paid big money. But you know what happens to that money, right?”
“Your pimp takes it?”
She wagged her finger at me. “If you’re not smart, your pimp takes it. But I was smarter than my pimp, and I took hundreds of thousands of dollars from that hijo de puta.” She gestured around her with her finger. “And beginning of this year I bought this and I retired.”
“And your pimp wants to know where the money came from. He figures it’s his money and he wants a cut of the profits.”
She nodded, then shook her head. “He wants a lot more than that. He says the place belongs to him and he wants to make it into a club, where he can sell girls and drugs.”
I sighed. “What do you want from me, Maria?”
She smiled with more than a touch of irony. “Don’t worry. I know one screw does not buy your kind of services. But I also know the kind of business you are in. I can pay. I need you to take care of my chulo, so nobody can trace it to me, and so he never comes back.” She leaned forward and there was black fire in her eyes. “And so all the other hijos de puta know that they cannot mess with me!”
I shook my head. “You have the wrong idea about me, Maria. I am not a gun for hire.”
She wagged her finger side to side and held my eye. “No,” she said. “I can look inside you, gringo. I know who you are. You are a killer. And you will do this for me. We will talk again.”
She stood and walked back into the building, closing the door behind her. I sat a while listening to the birds getting on with their morning. I chewed my lip and sipped my coffee and told myself I did not want to be a killer for hire. That was not why I had come to L.A. I had come to L.A. because I wanted to stop the killing.
In the end I made up my mind that I could not be sidetracked. Abi had been my last damsel in distress. Now I was going to do my job and go home. I got up and went back to my room. It was eleven thirty AM and I wanted to see if Fenninger had been to the office early that morning. I wasn’t surprised to find he had. There was an audio file that had been recorded at seven. I clicked on it and listened.
“Bill…”
“I will not listen to you, Epsilon, if you call me that. You are like a child…”
“OK! OK, Beta! We have a big fucking problem.”
“Try to calm down.”
“Try to calm down? Seriously? One of two things just happened to me. Do you know…” His chair moved and it sounded as though he stood up and started walking around. He sounded almost hysterical. “Do you know…?” He said it again, then changed, “Shall I tell you what just happened to me? Or maybe you know already!”
“You’re not making any sense, Epsilon.”
“Really? Well, forgive me for getting upset when somebody…” He stopped again. “Let me ask you a question, Beta.”
“That would be something, at least. So far you have phoned me at seven in the morning just to throw half-finished sentences at me.”
“Who is Ares?”
I smiled. I had got to him. He still wasn’t sure who I was. Beta was quiet for a moment, then said, “I am not sure how to answer that question, Epsilon. You want to put it into context for me? Better still, why don’t you just tell me what happened?”
Fenninger’s voice came as a shout from across the room. I could picture him pouring himself a drink. “You haven’t been wat
ching the news, Beta?”
A sigh. “I’m actually at the ranch, trying to disconnect for a few days.” There was a hint of reproach.
Fenninger’s voice came closer. It was almost a shout of anger. “Really? Really? You’ve been trying to disconnect! How convenient! What a convenient time you have chosen to disconnect!”
“Cut it out, Epsilon! You’re beginning to annoy me. Just cut to the chase, will you?! What happened?”
“Who is Ares?”
“Ares is the Greek god of war, Epsilon, as you well know!”
“As was Athena! But Zeus would use Ares when, as well as war, he wanted to sow chaos and mayhem! Am I right?”
“Where is this going? I am running out of patience.”
“Well, Ares came and paid me a visit yesterday!”
“What?”
“First he visited Intelligent Imaging Consultants, murdered Ahmed, Elena, Erick and Izamu, and staged it to look as though Ahmed had killed his colleagues and then jumped out of the window. The company is now in free fall and God alone knows what we are going to find when we recover control of it.”
“Wait! Wait, slow down, Epsilon. Who is this ‘he’? Who did this?”
“I am trying to tell you.”
“Try to get a grip, for crying out loud!”
“Once he had finished murdering our R&D company, he then went in search of my head of security, Bob, who actually managed to capture him.”
“Good! Where is he now?”
“I have no fucking idea! I have no fucking idea, Beta!” There was a long moment’s silence, then he went on, “Because he broke free, murdered Bob’s assistant and came within a microsecond of blowing my brains out—while you were disconnecting at your fucking ranch!”
“Epsilon, for the last time…”
“Shut the fuck up and listen!” Another pause, then, “He knew everything about us. He knew our structure, including the existence of Omega Alpha. He knew about the drought and he knew about our plans for Iran and Saudi. He knew Gamma was dead, he knew I was Epsilon and he told me, Beta, that he was Ares, Omega Alpha’s hit man, and that he had been sent by you and Alpha to eliminate me because I had become an incompetent liability!”
“That is not true. You must know that is not true.”
“Must I? Then how did he know? Tell me that. How was his information so detailed? There are only two possible explanations, Beta. Either he was telling the truth or it was Gamma’s son, Lacklan Walker.”
A long silence, then, “That is not possible. Neither of those two options is possible. Walker has too much to lose. He was as keen as we were to call a truce. And besides, he does not have that kind of information.”
“Then Alpha has acted on his own initiative without consulting you.”
“For God’s sake, Epsilon, get a grip! We are already suffering because of the loss of Gamma, why would he eliminate one of his own top five?”
“To make room for somebody else.”
“There is already room for somebody else! Gamma is dead! Think before you open your mouth, Epsilon!”
Fenninger’s voice became loud and close. “Then answer me this, Beta. Who else has that kind of knowledge? Who else has the ability to do this?”
There was another prolonged silence. Then Beta’s voice, level and cool. “Somebody who wants to sow chaos among us. He chose his name with care and intelligence. Ares, he may as well have called himself Kallisti. The Bringer of Chaos.”
“But who? Who has that kind of inside knowledge?”
“Not Walker. Could Gibbons have planted a mole?”
“Jesus Christ…!
“Go back to the vineyard. Immediately. Take your wife and the children. Barricade yourself there. I will dispatch a team to guard you. Alpha and I will join you there with Delta. We need to get to the bottom of this before it gets any more out of hand. Go now, arrange it now, immediately. Take Bob with you.”
They hung up and the call ended.
I pulled a Camel from the pack and lit up. I had been luckier than I deserved. The gods had been smiling on me after all. And now I would have Alpha, Beta, Delta and Epsilon, all together in one place. I couldn’t have wished for more. Kill: one had just become kill: four.
There wasn’t a lot I could do that day, so I spent time cleaning my Sigs and my knife and catching up on some sleep. At seven thirty that evening Maria came to my room and woke me. She didn’t knock. She opened the door and stood leaning on the jamb, looking down at me.
“You didn’t eat all day. You want some supper, gringo?”
I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. “You’re still here? Why do you call me gringo?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. You are a gringo.”
“OK, Majicana, I’ll have some supper.”
“You think that is gonna offend me?”
I stood. “I hope so.”
She came into the room and put her hand on my chest, smiling up into my face. “Yeah? You want to offend me? Why?”
“Then maybe you’ll stop calling me gringo. My name is John. John Smith.”
“Bullshit. Your name is Lacklan. You told me already, remember?”
“My name is not gringo. I’m going to have a shower. I’ll be out in five.”
She slipped her arms around me and kissed my neck. “You gonna help me, John?”
“Not if you keep doing that, no. Let me finish what I have to do, then we’ll talk.”
She let go of me and gave me a small shove. “OK, malo! Have it your way. You goin’ out tonight?”
“Late, yeah.”
“How late?”
“Why do you want to know, Maria?”
I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower in the cubicle. She leaned on the door, watching me. “Maybe I’m getting jealous.”
“Sure, and maybe Santa Claus really exists after all. I’m going out late. I don’t know what time. Stop pushing.”
I stood under the shower for ten minutes. Toweled myself dry and dressed in black jeans and a black roll neck sweater. Then I went out to reception. Don was at the desk, looking through some papers. He eyed me and said, “She set a table for you in the garden. You’re dining al fresco tonight.” He didn’t seem very amused.
“I should be gone by tomorrow.”
He glanced at me, nodded once and carried on with his papers. “Maybe we all will be.”
I was about to ask him what he meant, but decided I didn’t really want to know. I turned and went into the garden. She had set the table for me under the palms. The air was turning grainy in the dusk. The palms looked tall and thin, and strangely sinister in the dying light.
Fourteen
The sky above looked like somebody had tried to spray-paint it luminous orange and then thrown a few pink chemtrails across it before giving up on the job. Darkness was creeping in from the east and the birds, who’d been busy all day, were beginning to sound sporadic and sleepy. Out on the road, streetlamps and headlamps were beginning to come on, as though they’d somehow been triggered by the cooling air. The world was preparing for evening.
The door opened and Maria came out, holding a plate, a paper napkin and a knife and fork. She put a large steak and French fries in front of me, then set out the cutlery and sat opposite.
“Que aproveche.”
“Thanks.”
As I cut into the meat she said, “You have no respect for me because I was a whore in my previous life.”
I sighed and set down the knife and fork. “I can’t do this right now, Maria.”
“What is so important?”
“I can’t tell you. But I have already given you my answer. When the job is done we’ll talk about your pimp.”
She gave a snort that you could only describe as disdainful and looked away. “Talk. Is all anybody ever does: talk, talk. But Julio does not talk. He beats, he kicks, he cuts, but he does not talk.”
I picked up my knife and fork again. “Nobody talks more than you do, Maria. Do you ever
listen? Keep talking and you can eat the damned steak yourself and I will take myself right through that door.”
She looked at my face a moment, then at my steak, then turned away toward the creeping shadows. Above, the luminous sky had turned the color of crushed, dirty blueberries, and the birds had gone quiet. Suddenly it was nighttime. I cut into the steak and started eating again.
After a couple of minutes she said, “I was a kid in Mexico. I didn’t come here until I was fifteen.” I glanced at her but carried on eating. “My mom was a puta, but she was nice. She had five kids. She had a chulo, that’s like a pimp. Most of the time he was OK, only when he did coke he would hit her sometimes. We had to stay quiet when he did that.”
I didn’t answer. I was trying not to listen. I needed to focus on the job. I didn’t need to be hearing Maria’s story right then, but she went on.
“You know what my favorite thing in the whole world was? I was…” She shook her head. “I don’t know, eight, nine… right up to twelve years old. I loved the TV.” I glanced at her again, remembering suddenly Jim the night before. Maria was smiling, like she was a million miles away in some dream, remembering something magical. “The TV. Is stupid. I can see now it is stupid, but back then it was hope…” She looked at me and for a moment her smile was natural and real. “It was like a picture of what life could be. And the people you saw on the screen, they were like what people should be like. The ones I loved best were the American shows, like Friends, How I met your Mom, and Frasier!” She reached out her hand and touched my arm. “Frasier was so funny. He was so stupid, but he had a perfect family. When I was a kid I thought all American families were like Frasier’s. I thought all families should be like this, you know?”
I nodded. “I know.”
“It was something to aim for, something to fight for. A dream. I really believed that if I could get to California, it would all be OK. I could meet friends like Joey and Monica, fall in love with some perfect guy and have a family like Frasier.” She sat back, staring at the tall palms. “What do you call that,” she said. “Social… not stereotypes…”
I smiled in spite of myself. She was an interesting woman. For a moment I thought, in a different place and at a different time, who knew? She must have sensed it because she turned her head to face me. We locked eyes for a moment.