Strip Poker

by Lisa Lawrence

  I came at him with everything, giving him a swift kick in the thigh—far better than the balls. Bigger target, still hurts like hell. He grunted with the pain and hobbled a bit, and then I threw a jab that fell short and tried a reverse punch into his belly to knock the wind out of him. Bulls-eye. Go on, give him another.

  He pivoted away, our backs rolling against each other like gears, then I felt an open hand smack across the back of my head, and my vision exploded with pretty violet and blue lights. Next thing I knew, he had my wrist again, and gravity decided to go see what’s happening at the Royal Festival Hall. Bye, Teresa. Up in the air, and not in a good way. Then landing hard on my side and tumbling instinctively, and still my head felt lawn.

  “Ow,” I complained flatly to no one in particular, because Giradeau was off again.

  With an irritable huff, I picked myself up to follow. Stupid, Teresa. Very, very stupid. Should have hit him, jumped back. Hit him, jump back again. Keep your distance.

  No worries. A rematch was imminent. I was panting hard as I sprinted forward, and I spotted him several yards ahead of me.

  I opened my mouth to shout as I saw the return of the magic red dot, the beam of a laser sight, catch up to him. All at once it was as if two gigantic fingers yanked on his spine. The marionette began to rattle. Giradeau, his arms at his sides, shook in violent spasms. Oh, God, too late, far too late—

  Too dark and too far away to see the invisible wires plugged into the Belgian’s chest. The man who had just threatened Neil with a hypodermic was dying from needles of another kind. Two tiny barbs. Stun gun. Pull the trigger, and a compressed gas cartridge sends the electrodes shooting forward, and the ones for the newer models will work right through a bullet-proof vest. You can stand twenty feet from your target and still zap him.

  Hurry up, Teresa. Insulated wires. Grab them and yank them out before—

  Giradeau’s legs and spine lost all will, and he crumpled to the ground. I could just make out the wires floating to the cement, his executioner using a Swiss army knife or something to quickly cut them loose so he could take off. I knew Giradeau was dead even before I caught the faint whiff of cooked flesh.

  He was hit with way more than the 50,000 volts or whatever the safe amount was. Taser is the American company that manufactures most of the reputable sophisticated stun guns, but what was used a second ago was a ripped-off design, modified to be lethal.

  “Goddamn you, Simon!” I shouted loud and long.

  I’ll bet he was still close enough to hear me.

  Not that it mattered.

  Yes, Giradeau was a sadistic killer. But bringing him to trial could have ripped the lid off the whole dirty business. Simon’s masters weren’t interested in moral victory. They wanted what was expedient. Remove the player. Leave the table with the smaller pot.

  I suppose Giradeau’s death ended any threat of the strip poker circuit being exposed. By the time the cops arrived, everyone would have their clothes on and look sober.

  As I trudged up to The Lotus Eaters, George Westlake was standing outside the front door, waiting for me, looking strangely apologetic.

  “We’ve called the police,” he said, sounding quite formal.

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  He understood what I meant. Which ones were decent enough not to scamper off to save their reputations? Surprisingly, most of them. Vivian had a minor meltdown, insisting neurotically over and over that she had to go, and within five minutes, she grated on everyone’s nerves so much that they told her it’s okay, go already. But keep your mouth shut. If Vivian wanted to come back on the circuit, I knew she wouldn’t get in. Cowardice does wonders for reducing one’s sexual allure.

  “Um, Teresa?” started George, and he sounded unsure whether to call me that. As if he thought maybe it was an alias or something.

  “Whatever’s going on, whatever you think of us, we care about Janet. We can count on the porter and catering staff.

  They’ve always liked her, and I’ve…Well, um, I’ve greased a few palms for extra goodwill. It’s better that she was never here.”

  “I agree,” I said. “That has to include Neil too. When Giradeau showed up, there was a party, that’s all it was.”

  He nodded. In the games, George never won me, never fucked me. He had always treated me with respect. I stepped close and kissed him sweetly on the lips.

  “I wasn’t always acting,” I told him.

  He looked down at the ground shyly. He was all right.

  I made sure that Janet had the good common sense to leave with Neil, and then I fetched Helena and waited outside the club for the police. Three Met cars pulled up, sirens on, lights flashing, and I had to run through my spiel again ten minutes later when Carl showed up in an unmarked vehicle. I showed him where Giradeau’s body was.

  I told him I didn’t see who actually fired the stun gun at him. That much was true.

  15

  Helena was all right when I got her out of that storage closet. Taken to hospital but released the next morning. She could remember Giradeau hanging on her every word for a long time at the party, then things blurred, and he was “helping” her to sit down, only it seemed to take a long time to reach a settee. Next: blackout.

  Yes, she told Carl, she knew Daniel Giradeau from society functions and such. No, she had no clue as to why he should want to attack her. Or Lionel. Or Anthony Boulet. The Coltan motive never made it into the papers.

  It was three days later when Neil called me at home, and the call wasn’t unexpected. He said he wanted to talk, and I invited him to come round to my place.

  I buzzed him in and greeted him at my door, watched him remove his shoes and step forward cautiously to take in the surroundings. He checked out my CD stack and my bookshelf, examined the African carvings on the mantelpiece and the family photos of me, Dad, Mum, my brother. Me outside one of the Oxford colleges with friends, a framed snap of Helena and me.

  “So,” he mused sombrely, still looking around, “this is you. This is who Teresa Knight really is.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “This is me. Um, would you like a drink?”

  “I can’t stay that long.”

  “Oh.”

  He took a deep breath and announced, “Janet and I have talked. We hashed out a lot of issues that, well, I suppose have made us both a little crazy. And…it’s good, I think we’ve made a couple of breakthroughs. She wants me to go with her to South Africa.”

  Lionel’s words back in his office were beginning to ring true. I had assumed they had only been meant to hurt, but he had called it right.

  He won’t even think he’s playing you. He’ll believe what he feels for a while then drop you.

  “So you’re going,” I said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  Oh, hell, Teresa, I thought. It’s not like you two had anything to build from. You don’t even know if he would like who you really are. And who you really are seems to change with the job. When this guy’s done for the night, he puts away the script. Maybe if you had met him in a pub or something. Nah.

  Poor Lionel knew. He’d called it. All Janet and Neil had required was a crisis to make them grow up and start being responsible towards each other.

  “You take care of each other, okay?”

  “Yeah,” he promised.

  He loomed over me, tilted my chin with a finger and kissed me goodbye. We melted into each other, tongues playing, but I knew he’d pull out of it in a second so I finished first. Had it lasted a little longer, I would have covered his hand with mine and lifted it to my breast, making a silent invitation. I really wanted one last time with him before I had to give him up.

  But it probably wasn’t a good idea.

  “Get out of here,” I said.

  He smiled and went for the door, slipped on his shoes again. “You really are incredible, you know that, don’t you?”

  I laughed. “Thanks? I guess. You, too.”

  He closed the door after himself, and th
en I heard his shoes clicking down the hall. I stepped out of my apartment and leaned over the railing to watch the top of his head disappear down the stairs. In a second, he was gone.

  I sincerely hoped it worked out for those two and that they had a happy ending. I think they deserved one.

  Simon on the phone. Sounding very far away.

  “Please don’t hang up,” he said. “I know you’re pissed.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I’m not pissed.”

  “You mean anymore.”

  “Anymore, yes,” I said a little too irritably. “Janet’s all right. So is Helena.” And my cheque cleared.

  “That’s good,” I heard Simon say. “You should feel good, Teresa. I didn’t clue in on Giradeau, and neither did my office. Email told me nothing. We’ll have to watch out if anyone tries that fax stunt in the future.”

  So. He knew. Don’t know how he’d traced my steps on that one, but I guess he had his ways.

  “You stopped the whole mess from breaking open.”

  “Don’t patronise me, Simon. You finished him off so you look pretty good to your bosses. That’s why you’re chipper. People should know what they tried to do. What they are doing.”

  “They will know. Janet Marshall is still breathing. She can talk about Coltan all she likes now.”

  “Oh, please! The murders, the blackmail, all the facts that back up her case can’t be pinned on Orpheocon. You used your fancy spy gun and made Giradeau extra crispy! He was our link. The trail ends with him. He can’t be turned. He can’t point any fingers at who hired him. He’s dead! Thanks a lot.”

  I heard the steady noise of the long-distance line as he considered this. When he finally replied, his voice was calm, gentle.

  “And what would that accomplish, Teresa? A lengthy court and appeals process in London and Brussels? Probably Washington, too. Years dragging on and for what? While the fat cats at Orpheocon go merrily along raping these countries? And who would go to prison? No one. No single individual held accountable because it’s everyone to blame and no one. Orpheocon would lose a PR war for maybe six months. I’m fighting the real war.”

  “They must feel pretty good about themselves, whoever they are,” I said. “Your bosses. From Mandela to this in a decade. The country’s really grown up. They kept the president and all the other officials out of the loop, didn’t they?”

  I took his abrupt silence as confirmation.

  “Oh, that’s great. That’s marvellous, Simon. Now they know how to solve problems just like the CIA, the Mossad, and our local boys here.”

  “Teresa, we both love Africa. So do the people I work for. We saved a bit of it, all of us.”

  “No, Simon. We could have. You bought it a little time, that’s all.”

  Another one of those trademark Simon Highsmith pauses.

  “I hope we get to work together again, darling.”

  “Jeez, I don’t,” I said, and I rang off. These cordless phones are a drag because you can’t give someone a really good slam in their ear anymore.

  That was my second goodbye of the week. The third took longer and was far more fun—especially since I instigated it. I screwed up my nerve and called Ayako.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said, all of her curiosity packed into one syllable. “I didn’t expect to…” She stopped herself before she said something rude. “It’s good to hear from you.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” I said, “because I was hoping we could get together.”

  “Oh? What’s the occasion?”

  I sighed. “End of the case. A couple of friends leaving town.”

  “I see,” she answered. “Him.”

  “Well…yes.”

  “He can get under a girl’s skin.”

  “Yes, he can.”

  “So I get consolation prize?” she laughed, but she didn’t make it as sarcastic as the cold words on the page.

  “That’s not exactly how I would, uh…”

  She was giggling hard. “Okay, I guess I’ve made you squirm long enough. Take a cab to my place.”

  “When?”

  “Now, baby. Let the healing begin.”

  So I did. Like I keep saying, I learned a lot about myself on this case.

  She was waiting for me in an outfit that was meant for one of those twenty-year-old ingénues. With her youthful looks she could easily pull it off. Low-cut neck, bare left arm, full sleeve on right, bare midriff, no bra. Very short leather mini, so short I could see she was wearing no panties. She smelled good. She tasted good. She had me up against the door the minute I walked in, and like a man, her hands were all over me, stripping me in fifteen seconds flat.

  “Lie down,” she said, and I complied, listening absently to the smack and squelch of something being coated onto something else. Then I felt the slippery nudge of a dildo against my vaginal lips, the thick rubber dick slick with lubricant, and my pussy gates opened and accepted it greedily.

  “Tell me how you want it,” she whispered. “He could really take you hard, right?”

  “Y—yes,” I whimpered. “Fuck me hard with it.”

  And she began quick hard strokes with her toy, watching my fingers clench the pillow, and she listened to me moan and didn’t switch on the little motor until I was nearing my peak. I came and lay there for a long moment, rolling over with the red rubber dick still inside me, and the spell was broken. She had unzipped her skirt and tossed it aside, her self-control unravelling. Her pussy slurped with her juices, and she looked amazingly sexy like that, no bottoms, just that single sleeve top and the hard points of her nipples poking through the cotton. Forget Neil and his magic dick. I wanted her now, and I sat up and gathered her in my arms, kissing her deeply and tracing my fingers down to her sweet little thighs.

  I must have kissed her and stroked her for ages before my hand even strayed to her mound. She was powerfully erotic to me, half-dressed like that. Just to kiss her soft pillow lips, to look into her almond eyes and touch her straight black hair. I studied the gentle curve of her body as her top ended, and my eyes were rewarded with her lovely hips, the colour of porcelain.

  My girl. I was going to make her wake the neighbours tonight.

  I stayed at her place for three days, and it was like the beginning of a passionate affair. You know how it is in the beginning, right? You can’t keep your hands off each other. You don’t bother to go out but you order in, and the bed becomes a square little mattress planet, deserted except for you and your lover. We did that.

  We sat naked on her big king-size bed with a pizza box in front of our legs, a towelling roll for napkins, and we watched The L Word for laughs. I confessed I really could go for Jennifer Beals, even if the show must be some American network executive’s excuse to put on soft-core lesbian action under the guise of drama. We watched DVDs. Ayako could make a kick-ass cappuccino in the morning.

  We parted, I think, on pretty friendly terms. Despite the wildness of the poker games, she was one for routine. She liked sex on the side but companionship at home, easy access hand-holding when she took a break from reports on her laptop.

  She said she never wanted to turn into a “Japanese wife,” the term loaded with more references than I guess I’d know, but she didn’t realise she’d wound up shopping for one for herself.

  When I got home to my flat, waiting in the email inbox were PDFs from the publisher of my kids’ book. Sample sketches of the kind of illustrations that would accompany the text. Completely different style from Roxanne’s, but they didn’t suck. The stylised refugee camp backdrop looked like it was cut out of a newspaper photo, contrasted with the drawing of my plucky little girl detective heroine, who had big brown eyes and squiggles for hair—a kind of African Manga child, if you can imagine it. More cute than I would have liked, but I could live with it. It had been a week of compromises and graceful surrenders.

  Greece. Hot. Sandy. Sunny. Gorgeous. I was nude again, on display for everyone to see. This time in Cret
e, in Paleochora, on the western beach where naturists frolicked. Helena and me. The Mediterranean was a stunning blue, and I looked out at the water and ignored the “textiles” as they call them, the killjoy clothed and the clothed gawkers. Helena had said we could both use a vacation, and a grateful Janet announced it would be on her.

  “This is nice,” I declared, sitting up to open a bottle of water.

  Helena gave me a mother hen’s look. “How are you, darling?”

  “Me?” I laughed. “I’m fine! Come on, look where we are.” After a couple of seconds, I gave it up. Sighing, I added, “I’m okay. Really.”

  Helena wasn’t convinced. Maybe I wasn’t either. I meet a nice guy, someone who could maybe hold my interest for the whole stretch, and I don’t top his list. And that whole moral debate again with Simon? Ugh. Then there was the business with girls. I liked them. More than I ever thought I could. I may have to do something about that, like act on it occasionally.

  I think I could give up my taste for fucking in front of other people. And I probably didn’t need to get tied up again. Fun, sure, yet I could take it or leave it. At least, I hoped I could leave it. But girls…I like to think I knew myself pretty well. If I met a nice girl, yeah, I’d try to chat her up. And if it led somewhere, well, that was going to make for some interesting family conversations when I visited home. But it would be all right.

  Girl or guy, I would be all right.

  I patted Helena’s arm and said, “When we get home, I may take a few days out just to take stock, you know? Read. Cook. Take in a museum or something. A little ‘me’ time. It was getting crowded upstairs, all those people I had to worry about and what they were supposed to mean in my life. And now they’re gone.”

  “And you’re on a nice beach, away from it all,” Helena emphasized. “Sounds good: a little ‘you’ time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A celibacy break?” she teased.

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  I flashed her a smile and went to cool off in the sea. The shallower depths were warm at this hour, and I splashed my way in up to my hips. I was trying to screw up the courage to plunge in and handle the chillier currents when a big wave rolled in and just soaked me. That decided that.