
Crime Always Pays
A Screwball Noir
By
Declan Burke
Copyright © Declan Burke, 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.
"Crime is but a left-handed form of human endeavour."

W.R. Burnett

For their support and encouragement, and for writing damn fine novels, this book is dedicated to Adrian McKinty and John McFetridge.
Praise for Declan Burke's THE BIG O:
"Imagine Donald Westlake and his alter ego Richard Stark moving to Ireland and collaborating on a screwball noir, and you have some idea of Burke's accomplishment." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"THE BIG O is one of the sharpest, wittiest and most unusual Irish crime novels of recent years ... Declan Burke is ideally poised to make the transition to a larger international stage." -- John Connolly, author of THE LOVERS
"Burke has married hard-boiled crime with noir sensibility and seasoned it with humour and crackling dialogue ... fans of comic noir will find plenty to enjoy here." -- Booklist
"THE BIG O is full of dry Irish humour, a delightful caper revolving around a terrific cast ... If you don't mind the occasional stretch of credulity, the result is stylish and sly." -- The Seattle Times
"Carries on the tradition of Irish noir with its Elmore Leonard-like style ... the dialogue is as slick as an ice run, the plot is nicely intricate, and the character drawing is spot on ... a high-octane novel that fairly coruscates with tension." -- The Irish Times
"With a deft touch, Burke pulls together a cross-genre plot that's part hard-boiled caper, part thriller, part classic noir, and flat out fun. From first page to last, THE BIG O grabs hold and won't let go." -- Reed Farrel Coleman: Shamus, Barry, and Anthony Award-winning Author of THE JAMES DEANS
"Irish thrillers don't get much more hard-boiled than this gritty, violent and wildly hilarious kidnap caper." -- Irish Independent
"Delightful ... darkly funny ... Burke's style is evocative of Elmore Leonard, but with an Irish accent and more humour ... Here's hoping we see lots more of Declan Burke soon." -- Kansas City Star
"Faster than a stray bullet, wittier than Oscar Wilde and written by a talent destined for fame." -- Irish Examiner
Advance praise for Declan Burke's forthcoming BAD FOR GOOD:
"A genuinely original take on noir, inventive and funny. Imagine, if you can, a cross between Flann O'Brien and Raymond Chandler." -- John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of THE SEA
"BAD FOR GOOD is unlike anything else you'll read this year ... Laugh-out-loud funny ... This is writing at its dazzling, cleverest zenith. Think John Fowles, via Paul Auster and Rolling Stone ... a feat of extraordinary alchemy." -- Ken Bruen, author of AMERICAN SKIN
"Stop waiting for Godot -- he's here. Declan Burke takes the existential dilemma of characters writing themselves and turns it on its ear, and then some. He gives it body and soul ... an Irish soul." -- Reed Farrel Coleman, two-time Shamus Award-winning author of EMPTY EVER AFTER"A harrowing and yet hilarious examination of the gradual disintegration of a writer's personality, as well as a damned fine noir novel ... Burke has outdone himself this time; it's a hell of a read." -- Scott Philips, author of THE ICE HARVEST
WEDNESDAY
Sleeps
It was bad enough Rossi raving how genius isn't supposed to be perfect, it's not that kind of gig, but then the vet started carping about Sleeps' pride and joy, the .22, nickel-plated, pearl grip, enough to stop a man and put him down but not your actual lethal unless you were unlucky. And right now, empty.
Sleeps waggled it in the vet's general direction. 'Less talk,' he said, 'more angel of mercy. How's that ear coming?'
Not good and not fast, Rossi ducking around like Sugar Ray in a bouncy castle. Still in shock, bofto on the wowee pills, with these delusions of grandeur -- he was Tony Montana or maybe Tony Manero, Sleeps couldn't say for sure.
It didn't help there was no actual ear. The wolf had tore it clean off, along with enough skin to top a sizeable tom-tom. Plus the vet was using catgut and what looked to Sleeps like a needle he'd last seen on the Discovery Channel stuck horizontal through a cannibal's nose.
In the end Sleeps stepped in and stuck his forefinger in the wound, stirred it around. Rossi screeched once, high-pitched, then keeled over.
'I'll be wanting,' Sleeps said, wiping his finger on Rossi's pants, 'a bag of horse tranks. And whatever gun you use for putting down the animals.'
The vet shook his head. 'We don't use those anymore, they're not humane.'
'Humane? You're a vet, man.'
'We treat them like children,' the vet said, 'not animals.'
'Nice theory.' Sleeps scratched the cattle-prod off his mental list, gestured at Rossi with the .22. 'But what if they're a little of both?'
Melody
'So if the movie gets made,' Melody said, 'or film I should call it, or the script at least gets picked up, optioned, then I pay it back, this loan-grant that's not really a loan or a grant but somewhere in between. At, you're saying, no interest.'
'That's right.'
'But if it doesn't fly, I don't owe anything?'
'The Institute is here to encourage innovation,' the guy said, swiveling now in his chair behind the desk, fingers steepled on his pot belly. A nice view of Temple Bar behind him through the tall windows, the cobbled streets that'd been laid specially for the Michael Collins shoot, they'd left them down after, a gift to the city. Mel'd nearly broke an ankle on the way in, a kitten heel getting jammed between cobbles. He smiled now, Tony, the guy with kindly pale blue eyes behind rimless specs. 'If you're worrying about how you'll pay the money back,' he said, 'you're not likely to be at your creative best, are you?'
Mel liked those odds.
'I've got it all budgeted out,' she said, extracting the relevant sheaf of paper from her folder, the front of which bore the legend Beautiful Losers in gold magic marker. 'We're talking twenty-five and change, for the year. That includes research and writing, locations, some meet-and-greet funds for the --'
'Locations?'
'Sure, the eye-candy. I'm thinking Amorgos, where they shot The Big Blue. You've seen it, right? Ohmigod, the scenery's amazing.'
'Amorgos?'
'It's in Greece, yeah. For when Jack and Judy get out to the islands, go to ground and --'
'I'm just wondering,' the guy said, no longer swiveling, 'if it's Greece you need specifically. Because if it's just an island, you might want to think about the Isle of Man, there's nice tax-breaks going. Or the Saltees, just off the coast of Wexford. Spielberg, when he was making Private Ryan, he was thinking about using the Saltees at one point.'
'Okay,' Mel said. 'But you're not really getting that Greek quality of light on the Saltees, are you?'
'That's where your post-production guys earn their money.'
'Sure.' Mel staring the guy out, trying to decide if he was serious. 'But my movie, I mean film, it's set in Greece. What the story is about, it's what these two do inGreece, Jack and Judy. They're like Jack and Karen in Out of Sight, only Judy isn't a cop, they're both blaggers but very cool, very now. It's why Jack's named for Jack Foley, he's laidback but maybe lethal, you don't know. Or maybe he's a little older, like that guy from Miller's Crossing ...' Perspiring now, Mel with the distinct impression she was losing the guy, hot flushes breaking out. She forced a smile. 'Ohmigod, I can never remember that guy's name, the Miller's Crossing guy.'
'Albert Finney?'
'No, not Albert, the other guy ...' Mel had the old familiar feeling now, mild concussion from banging her head off brick walls. Stomach churning. 'Have youread the script?' she said. 'I mean, the synopsis, the treatment, the character bible, all that stuff you had me put together, go back and rewrite like five hundred times before you'd even open that precious door over there ... Did you read any of it? Like, where's there one character in the whole script Albert Finney could play? Which one of the young, hip, attractive characters could Albert, fine actor that he is, don't get me wrong, I loved him in Shoot the Moon but no way he's ever playing fifty again, never mind thirty-something ... Excuse me a sec, okay?' Mel fumbled in her pockets for a Kleenex, then got up and went to the side of his desk, retched noisily into the wastepaper basket. Then she went back to the seat and got comfy, wedged herself in, Mel pretty sure it was the last time for a long time she'd be sitting in it, she might as well get her money's worth. Tony's eyes looking owlish as he licked his lips. 'Exactly who,' she said, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with the Kleenex, 'you don't mind me asking, have you identified as a possible for Albert Finney? Judy?'
Karen
Karen sat on the edge of the bed.
'A cruise,' Ray said, blinking up at her. 'Me and you and a Siberian wolf named Blue, off cruising the Med.'
'Madge booked it Sunday, before we mentioned about snatching her.'
Anna lifted her massive head and whined. Karen scratched her under the chin, gazed into the cloudy amber eye. 'It's okay, hon. You're doing fine.'
'What'd the doc say?'
The doc, after he hoked the bullet out of Ray's arm, reckoned Anna was doing as well as could be expected, the girl shipping a .22 round point-blank. While admitting he was no expert in gunshot wounds in wolves, the guy reckoned the plate of bone that was Anna's forehead meant the slug probably came off worse.
'He said to keep her doped, the last thing you want is a wolf with a migraine. But, she gets enough rest, she should be fine.'
'That's fantastic,' Ray said, 'a real weight off my mind. He say anything about me?'
'Sure. It's a clean break, six weeks in a cast. You can still drive, right? One-armed.'
'Drive where?'
'The Med, Ray. Athens.' Ray was still a little woozy from the shock and the pills, this after five or six hours of dozing off and on, adrenaline spikes fritzing him awake. Giving Doyle plenty of time to get Frank out of the woods, put the news on the wire. 'We'll be needing all sorts of documentation if we want Anna to fly,' she said. 'And there's quarantine. That means waiting, I dunno, weeks. Maybe months.'
'You want to smuggle the wolf out of the country.'
Karen shrugged. 'Rossi rats her out at the hospital, how she ripped his ear off, they'll be looking to put her down.'
'I hear you.' Ray pushed out his slinged arm, looking to Karen like a stroke victim trying the Funky Chicken. 'But there's no way I'll make it all the way to Athenslike this.'
'I can drive.'
'You ever driven a van before?'
'There's a first time for everything.'
'Not when you're fugiting from justice there isn't. What about Madge, has she ever driven a van?'
'Not likely. Besides, she's flying.'
'Bad idea. They'll be watching the airports.'
'Terry's making private arrangements. Says he likes the sound of a cruise, never took one before.'
'Terry's taking the cruise?'
'Madge told him about plugging Frank. Guy nearly creamed himself.'
'Terry did?'
'Why wouldn't he?'
'She just shot Frank. The woman's a cop magnet, she might as well be free doughnuts.'
'Maybe that's his buzz. He's torn between two, y'know ...'
'He fancies some posh is what it is. He can't make these private arrangements for Anna?'
'He tried, yeah. No joy. But he has an automatic, a van, out on the lot. Says all I have to do is point it and drive.'
Ray shook his head, then heaved himself up onto his good elbow, glanced around. 'Where's the money?'
'It's here.' Karen kicked the bag she'd tucked under the bed. 'Think Terry'll still want his fifty gees?'
'That was the deal.'
'Yeah, but --'
'I can tell him how the insurance company only paid out two hundred instead of the full half mill,' Ray said, subsiding onto the pillow again, 'I don't know, maybe there'll be a miracle. But it was Terry who cut us in, him and Terry Junior, for a flat fifty. He's owed.'
Which was disappointing, but more or less what Karen'd expected. 'One more thing,' she said.
'Just the one?'
'I don't have a passport.'
'No?'
'Never been out of the country, Ray. Not with Anna to look after. What do you think, will that be a problem?'
'I doubt it,' Ray said. 'Terry Swipes is a man of many talents.'
Madge
'Import-export,' Terry said, a grin starting, when Madge asked what he did.
'What's so funny?' she said.
'Nothing.'
'No, really. What am I missing?'
Terry behind a huge walnut-wood desk, maroon crushed-velvet curtains in the bay window behind, a green-shaded reading lamp on the desk. Clipping a cigar now. A nicely lined face, a little worn, the eyes webbed with laughter lines, mischief sparkling in their faded blue. A benign thug, putting Madge in mind of Paul Newman, only bald. 'You ever watch the Bond movies?' he said.
'Not by choice,' Madge said. Frank had liked the Bond movies. Sitting on the green-leather couch, dimples the size of saucers, sipping on the brandy Terry'd poured for medicinal purposes, Madge wondered when she'd be officially cured. Maybe then Terry'd get around to pouring a more sociable measure. 'All that macho stuff,' she said, 'it's not really me.'
'Says the lady who blew out her husband's knee.'
'Ex-husband. The divorce comes through on Friday.'
'I guess you can kiss that alimony goodbye.'
'I'll live.'
'I'll just bet you will. How's that brandy treating you?'
'Like a gentleman, more's the pity. Listen, Terry, can you keep a secret?'
'Depends what it is.'
'I'm fine.'
'Okay.'
'Seriously, I'm good. Karen, I know, she's worried about me. Thinks I'm ready to freak because I shot Frank's knee.' Terry leaned forward, elbow on the desk and chin on palm, cigar forgotten. 'She's concerned, and it's an admirable trait she has, that I'll melt down once the shock wears off.'
'You're saying it won't.'
'She's young, Terry. I mean she's smart, don't get me wrong, and I love the girl to bits. But she still thinks everyone should feel how she does. You know she used to pull stick-ups?'
'Karen?'
'It's how she met Ray, he walked into a place she was sticking up. Surprised her, came up from behind.'
'Lucky he didn't get his head blown off.'
'See, this is Karen all over. She never loaded the gun. Couldn't cope, even thinking about it, with how she'd feel after putting a bullet in someone.'
'You're saying, you're coping.'
'Put Frank in front of me now, a gun in my hand, I'd do it again.'
'But only Frank.'
'No one else ever gave me enough reason.'
Terry got up from behind the desk and went to the drinks cabinet, poured a brace of brandies. 'Remind me,' he said, carrying them across to the couch, 'never to give you a reason.'
Madge took his balloon glass away, poured its contents into her own. 'Remind yourself,' she said. 'Slainté.'
Rossi
'Y'think maybe the cops have their own hospital?' Sleeps said. 'Their own ER at least, it makes sense. No one wants to be flat-backed beside some perp they've just whacked. That's bad juju.'
'It was Madge,' Rossi said, 'who blew Frank's knee out.'
'While he was handcuffed to the cop.'
Rossi used one of the cop's handcuff keys to scratch up under the turban, the bandage drying out stiff and purple-black over where his ear used to be, the wound already itchy. 'I never heard of no cops' hospital,' he said.
'So then we're looking at her coming here. With you, y'know, under arrest. She read you up, right?'
Rossi flinched as the metal teeth snagged on the catgut stitches. 'She started to,' he said, easing the key out from under the turban. 'Then she stopped when I fired down on her. So I dunno if that qualifies as properly habeas corpused and shit.' He shrugged. 'What d'you want, we sit outside the cop shop 'til she shows up there?'
Sleeps had another squint out over the parking lot, seventeen rows all the way to the ER bay. 'We should be gone, Rossi.'
'You're the one wants to go back inside,' Rossi pointed out, 'do soft time.'
'That was then. Except now there's cops involved, cops and guns.'
'And on the other side,' Rossi said, doggie-paddling his hands on an invisible see-saw, 'there's two hundred grand and the ear.'
'The ear's gone, man. Forget about the ear.'
'Forget about it? The bitch chewed my ear off.' Rossi shook his head, wincing even as he did it. 'Don't doubt it, I'm ripping the hound open, digging it out.'
'And then what -- you sew it back on? After it's been a couple a days in her gut? It'll be eaten away with acids.'
'You heard the doc. It's not just hearing, your balance gets screwed too. I'm looping the fuckin loop over here.'
'That'll be the goofballs. The vet said two every eight hours, not eight every two minutes. And what he said was, you start messing with the bandage and the inner ear gets infected, you'll --'
'Hold up.' Rossi pointed across the car park to where an ambulance had pulled in at the ER doors, was now discharging its cargo. The cop still cuffed to Frank, bent double at the waist until the medics extended the stretcher to its full height. 'The seagull,' he said, 'has landed.'
Doyle
'It doesn't look good, Steph.' Ted paced as far as the window, twitched the blind, glanced out into the parking lot, then came back across the office and slipped in behind his desk, pointed at his left ear. 'How's the hearing coming on?'
'What?'
'I said, How's your -- oh.'
'Sorry.'
'This is serious, Steph.'
'I know. Go on.'
'Want a smoke? A coffee or anything?'
'I'm fine, Ted. Really.'
'Okay.' Ted scratched his stubble glancing down at the prelim report laid out in front of him. Doyle wishing she had her gun, could toss it on Ted's desk. Be Clint, be gone. 'So you're saying here,' he said, 'you didn't see who shot Frank.'
'I closed my eyes after I got shot at,' Doyle said. 'Forgot to open them again.'
'And this tinnitus you got probably means you didn't, uh, hear anything that might, y'know ...'
Doyle shook her head.
'And I'm guessing you didn't smell anything. How's your sixth sense, that female intuition?'
'That went on the fritz the first night I slept with you.'
'That happens a lot.'
Doyle felt bad stringing him along. Ted was one of the few good guys, solid. None of the smarmy crap about Doyle being some kind of affirmative action experiment, let's make a college girl detective, see how badly she and her shiny degree in psychology can fuck it all up ...
Except Doyle, okay, it had taken a while, but she'd fucked up. Nine years of clean nose and regular collars, slow promotion, all screwed in ten minutes flat. Christ, Rossi'd even taken the keys to her cuffs, they'd had to saw them off at the hospital. The boys in the bullpen were going to love that, a Pamplona charge to see who'd get to drop the juicy dime first.
Ted riffled through the report once more, cleared his throat. 'So we have Frank Dolan,' he said, 'a plastic surgeon. Except he's running a kidnap scam, juicing insurance companies. What's wrong with this picture?'
'The guy's under investigation, some surgery went wrong. So he's branching out.'
'Okay. But he sets up his wife to be snatched?'
'They were separated. She'll be his ex-wife by Friday.'
'Right. So Frank has this guy Ray kidnap his ex-wife-to-be. Then, he's already insured her against kidnap for half a mill, he stings Trust Direct. Except then this Ray guy comes to you looking to double-cross Frank, hang him out to dry.'
'That's about the height of it, yeah.'
'So how come you know this Ray?'
Doyle'd been waiting for it. 'He made himself known.'
'Just dropped into your lap.'
'Not literally, if that's what you're asking.'
'I'm not. What's Ray gain by blowing the whistle?'
'He was looking to get out, go straight. Reckoned he'd pull a couple of years, he was just the sidekick.'
'You believe him?'
'I did, yeah.'
'And now?'
'I don't know.'
'Okay. So this Karen, who's she?'
'She's with Ray.'
'But she's the ex-wife's friend too.'
'That's right.'
'And she's also Frank's secretary.'
'Yep.'
'So this Ray, he's grifting everyone.'
'Maybe. I don't know. He took a bullet up at the lake when it looked like Madge was in trouble.'
Ted glanced down at the report. 'Taking one from this guy Rossi, right?' Doyle nodded. 'Where's he come in?'
'Karen's ex. Three-time loser, he's only out a week after a five-year jolt.'
'Not exactly rehabilitated, is he?'
'The way he told it, he just wanted his shit back from Karen. His Ducati bike, his .44. Except she wouldn't play ball.'
'And now he's gone with the two hundred thou. Leaving you cuffed to Frank.'
'I was the one cuffed myself to Frank, Ted. As per your orders. Rossi just took the key.'
'And you've no idea where Ray and Karen are gone?'
'Nope.'
'But they took the ex-wife with them.'
'Yep.'
'Leaving you to take the rap.'
'Looks like it.'
Ted sucked on his teeth. 'Trust Direct are screaming blue murder,' he said.
'Don't, Ted. I'll cry.'
'You hear what I'm saying, though. They'll be up our crevices on the investigation. I mean, some surgeon gets shot in the woods and his kidnapped wife, a charity-hound socialite, goes missing?' Ted rolled his eyes. 'Christ, it'll be front page.' He reached for the pack of Players Blue and sparked a smoke, this contrary to station regs, while he flicked idly through the report.
'What's the latest on Frank?' Karen said.
'He's stable.' He gestured at her bloody clothes. 'By the way, in case no one else says it, you did a good job up there.'
Doyle, abandoned by Karen and Ray in the little clearing up at the lakeshore, had set fire to the Forestry Commission cottage. This because Rossi, taking the handcuff keys, had done the rounds, swiped everyone's cell phone too, chucked them in the lake. Frank had bawled like a wind-trapped calf when she'd dragged him up onto the rickety wooden porch. Doyle couldn't really blame him, Frank with his shin blown out. Tying a tourniquet above his knee, Doyle had wanted to puke every time she caught a glimpse of the white shards showing through the ragged hole in his pants.
When he'd started shivering Doyle couldn't tell if it was septicemia or hypothermia or the guy just realising how close he'd come. So she'd dragged him in beside the cottage's glowing embers, cuddled him close.
For nearly five hours.
By the time the first fireman came trudging out of the trees into the clearing, the guy tall and bulky in his uniform, just the way she liked them, Doyle was so pissed she forgot to flirt.
'The guy's so grateful,' Ted said, 'he's suing your ass for negligence.'
'He'll hardly get fat suing this ass.' Karen cocked a hip. Ted grinned. She said, 'This investigation. I'm suspended for the duration, right?'
'Don't take it personal. It's for your own good.'
'With pay.'
'Innocent until proven, sure.'
'Meanwhile, you still have Frank.'
'Who's claiming he was railroaded by this guy Ray.'
'Except I have Frank's laptop, the guy kept records he shouldn't have.'
'Writing up scrips,' Ted said, riffling back through the pages again, 'for Nervocaine. Black market.'
'What's important there is, one of his customers, a guy called Doug, was his insurance broker with Trust Direct. Doug also being a golf partner of Frank's.'
Ted, seeing it, nodded along. 'Trust Direct squawk too loud, we whisper inside job. I'm liking it so far. Go on.'
'You put me front and centre, I'm suspended pending blah-dee-blah. Nothing's more important than transparency, the force being accountable. Meanwhile I'm packed off to Elba with Napoleon.'
'You think this Ray likes the sound of Elba in autumn?'
'Fuck Ray. Rossi's the one has the money.'
'You know I can't sanction that, Steph.'
Doyle cupped a hand around her right ear. 'Sanction what, Ted?'
Ted parked his smoke in the ashtray, dry-washed his face, had a good long stare at the ceiling. Then, without looking at her, 'Okay. Just don't send me any postcards from Elba.' He closed the file, stood up and moved around the desk. 'C'mere.'
Doyle accepted the peck on the cheek, the comforting squeeze, then shouldered her bag. 'How d'you want to do this?' she said.
'Just slam the door open, leave the rest to me.'
Doyle stalked away from Ted's office with her chin up, his threats booming down the corridor behind her. Ignoring the smirks, the meaningful glances the boys threw one another.
Suspended with pay, indefinitely. The world her oyster with Guinness chasers.
Sleeps
'He buys a gun,' Sleeps said, 'steals a car.'
'What now?'
Rossi, staking out the cop shop buzzed on horse tranks and a tetanus shot and crooning some croaky Elvis, had Sleeps on edge.
'What you're singing,' Sleeps said, 'is the guy steals a gun and buys a car.'
'Sure. He tries to run but he don't get far, so he steals a gun and buys a car.'
'It's the other way round, man.'
'Your way,' Rossi said, 'their way, that's just propaganda. Like, the guy's a no-hoper, a clown. My way, the guy's running, okay? I mean actually running. But then he goes, "Hey, the fuck am I running when I could be driving?" Except he's skint, yeah? So he steals a gun, heists a place, I dunno, maybe a bank, a bookies, and gets himself a poke. Then buys a car. You see what I'm saying.'
'What you said was, you didn't want to hang around outside the cop shop.' Sleeps aiming for reasonable. 'This on the off-chance the guy we stole the car off picks this shop to report it, sees us on his way in.'
'Where's the last place,' Rossi said, 'the cops'll be looking for us?'
'Outside a cop shop, yeah, you already said. But --'
'She's in there now, Sleeps, getting hell from the commissioner. She's a disgrace, the whole nine yards. But he's giving her one more chance and she better not blow it.'
'It was me? I'd be on the blower to my brief, crying post-traumatic stress disorder. Perforated eardrums, the works.'
Rossi shook his head. 'This one's tough, Sleeps. You see the way she faced me down up at the lake? I mean, with no rod, nothing. Just stepped up, gave me the eyeball.'
Sleeps, who'd been half a mile away at the time, snoozing at the bottom of a gully in a Beamer that'd slipped sideways off the muddy track, said, 'Rossi?'
'What?'
'It ever occur to you, with all these movies you're always bigging up, how the cops generally win in the end? You never noticed that?'
Rossi sniffed. 'More propaganda.' Then he stiffened. 'Shit, here she comes.'
Sleeps heaved his huge bulk forward, reaching for the keys in the ignition. 'Annnnnd there she goes,' he said, slumping back in his seat as the cop turned a sharp right into the coffee shop two doors down. 'With,' he added, 'another cop in tow. Christ, it's the Fear and Loathing convention over there.'
Karen
Terry Swipes rattled off the numbers like a bingo caller speaking in tongues. 'We'll say ten for Karen's passport. And Terry Junior gets his five points finders-fee off the gross for setting up the snatch. And that's five points from both of us.'
Ray, counting bills onto Terry's desk, nodded.
'So that's what,' Terry went on, 'thirty in total? Including the van.' Ray nodded again. 'Okay,' Terry said, 'we'll call it thirty flat. I'll waive my cut.'
Ray stopped counting. 'You'll what?'
'Waive.' Terry grinned across at Madge. 'What, I'm not entitled to waive?'
'Yeah, but --'
'Call it a good luck gift. From me to the happy couple.'
Karen, sitting beside Madge on the dimpled leather couch, nudged Madge's knee. Madge wiggled an elbow into Karen's ribs, sipped on her brandy and gave Karen a deadpan stare over the rim of the glass. Madge looking a little bright-eyed to Karen, flushed on something more than brandy.
'Fifty grand's a lot of good luck,' Ray said. 'You think we need that much good luck?'
'You're driving across Europe,' Terry swiveled in his leather chair, hands joined on his ample belly, 'with a busted arm and a wolf in the back. You packing?'
'Not yet,' Ray said. 'I'll grab the Sig from the lock-up.'
'An automatic with a busted arm? What if it jams?'
'It's never jammed before.'
'Famous last words. What about reloads?'
'I'm only ever reloading in a firefight,' Ray said. 'On my own? No way I'm getting in any firefights.'
'Okay. But you're better going with, say, a .38 Special. Never jams, manual load. Hold it between your knees, pop 'em in one at a time.'
Karen cleared her throat. 'Try this,' she said, 'just for the sake of argument. How about we bring no gun at all?'
Terry pursed his lips, glanced from Ray to Karen, then back to Ray. Ray didn't look at Karen at all.
'Uh, Karen?' Terry said. 'No disrespect. But if Ray tells me he's schlepping off across Europe with a case of cash and no heat? I'll bust his other fucking arm here and now.'
'But what if --'
'The what-ifs,' Terry said, 'is why you need the .38.'
Doyle
'Suspended with pay,' Sparks said reverently.
Doyle, still feeling her way into it, just shrugged. 'Them's the rules.'
'So what's the skinny?'
'Mainly they're wondering how come Ray just fell into my lap.'
'You wish.' Sparks, the desk sergeant, tucked a wayward strand of frizzy red hair behind her ear. 'That'll be Ted, the jealous prick.'
Doyle, sipping her latte, was surprised to realise part of her wanted to believe it. Except Ted had hooked up three or four months after he and Doyle split, got himself engaged, some tax analyst he'd met on the dry ski-slope out in Wicklow, Ted getting in some slaloms before heading away for a stag do in the French Alps.
'Ted's cool, Sparks. The shit's coming down from upstairs.'
'Because the boys can't find Madge.'
Doyle remarked on how the boys, her illustrious peers, wouldn't find a priest in Rome.
'Unless they bumped into one down the brothel,' Sparks said. 'I mean, it'd be alright, the ransom going west, the surgeon getting his knee blown out, if they at least had the rescued lunching lady to parade around. But she's nowhere. The boys're in a sweaty fret.' She forked up a generous chunk of triple-tier Death by Chocolate. 'You're not worried about her?'
'She left with Karen and Ray. Wherever she is, she's okay.' Doyle thought about that. 'I was her, finding out Rossi was my son? I'd be unconscious on pills somewhere sunny.'
Sparks lowered her fork. 'The skanger's her son?'
'Long story. What's the latest on Frank?'
'They're waiting for a warrant to come through to search the house. Plus they're hoping his tart on the side, Genevieve, sobers up sometime this century so they can ask her a few questions.' Sparks shook her head in wonder. 'Seriously, though -- Rossi's her son?'
'So she said. What about Karen and Ray?'
'The usual All Pointless Bullshit. Airports, ferries.'
'The boys think they're leaving the country?'
'Not dragging a wolf with them they're not. By the way, the wolf? The boys're shooting on sight. We're down one Alsatian already, out at Seagrove. I wouldn't mind but it was one of our own.'
'They're shooting at Anna? But she's a pet.'
Sparks sucked chocolate off her finger. 'The vet who called in the mauling, the possible rabies? He said the guy was a feather off having his head mushed. And that van they found in the woods, the window was busted in from hard enough to shunt the van into a gully. Inside was like a bomb in a jam factory.' She forked home more cake. 'Why didn't Karen just cross a croc with a rhino, be done with it?'
'What van is this?'
'The van in the woods.' Sparks frowned. 'They found it in the gully, beside a wrecked Beamer.'
'But no Rossi. No money.'
'No money and about two pints of, they're guessing, the elusive Rossi.'
'If it was Anna,' Doyle said, wondering why Ted hadn't mentioned the van, 'she had her reasons. Rossi, breaking her in, took her eye out with a fork.'
Sparks thought about that, then shrugged and forked home some more cake. 'So what're you doing to do with your time off? You need to stick around for the investigation?'
'Nope.'
'Then take a holiday. Pack a thong, get some sun on that lily-white ass. Where's Niko these days -- Barcelona? Cannes?'
'Don't even go there,' Doyle said.
'You're the one won't go there. I was you, had a guy calling me up, "Hey, come on over to Venice for some fun, we'll party, no strings," guess where I'd be? The Tardis, seeing if I couldn't be in like five different places at the same time, getting five different tans.'
'You have no idea,' Doyle said, 'how bad his breath stinks.'
'So pretend you're a hooker, you don't do kissies. Listen, the main reason I brought it up? I've time coming. I'm due twelve days.'
'Oh yeah?'
'Plus I ran a check on one Madge Dolan.'
'You ever use that computer for official police work?'
'I'm police, I'm official. Anyway, the last time Madge used her credit card? Sunday, over the internet. Booking a cruise out of Athens that starts Friday night,eight o'clock.'
'It can get sunny,' Doyle said slowly, 'in Athens. She booked in on her own?'
'According to the cruise people, no.'
'They're the ones who'd know,' Doyle said. 'So who?'
'Promise to tell me about Madge and Rossi?'
'Christ, Sparks ...'
'Karen King.'
'No Ray Brogan?'
'No Ray. No Raymond, Raphael, Rainier, Reynaldo, Raymundo ... You find out his real name yet?'
'It's a work in progress. So she books a cruise on Sunday ...'
'And gets herself snatched Monday. Maybe she's psychic, huh? Had herself a premonition.'
'Could be. When's she flying out?'
'Thursday evening, six o'clock. Except here's the thing. It's for two flights to Denver.'
'Denver?'
'Denver Colorado, via New York. Plus there's payments to a place called Piste of Mind.'
'The ski shop?'
'You know it?'
'It's where Ted picked up his stuff, gloves and shit, that time he went on the stag weekend.' Doyle cocked her head. 'What d'you think, she's laying down a false trail?'
'Looks like it. But which is which?'
'With no flight to Athens, you'd be thinking Denver.'
'She look much like a skier to you?'
'I'm thinking a cruise'd be more her style.'
'Me too.'
'Mainly,' Doyle said, 'because you want some sun on your ass.'
'True. But hey, you're there for Friday night when the cruise leaves, she's not on it? Just hop a flight for Denver.'
Doyle drank off the last of her latte, cold now, tasteless. 'You tell the boys any of this?'
Sparks shrugged. 'Since when has it been an actual crime,' she said, 'to book a cruise?'
Melody
'Be with you in a sec,' Melody said, looking up from the computer. She glanced over the guy's shoulder at the clock on the back wall above the rack of Far East / Australasia brochures, its red LCD showing temperatures in all the time-zones, still 28 degrees in Marrakech and nearly ten o'clock there, give or take.
Then focused on the guy, hulking and slope-shouldered, the untidy shag of dirty-blonde hair with a fringe, falling across his eyes and putting her in mind of Javier Bardem, No Country. 'So how can I help?' she said, flashing a smile.
'I'm looking to book a holiday.'
'Well, you've come to the right place.' She rattled a few keys on the keyboard for show. 'Anywhere particular in mind?'
'Not really. Where's hot right now?'
'Weather-hot or cool-hot?'
'You can't get both?'
'Sure. Just give me an idea of where you're thinking about.'
The guy considered, then shrugged. 'That girl was just in here, she looked funky. Where's she going?'
'I shouldn't say,' Mel said. 'It's not really a service we provide to women flying alone, a potential stalker as a surprise added extra.'
The guy grinned. 'It's okay,' he said. 'I know her.'
'Oh yeah? What's her name?'
'Let's just say she's a friend of a friend.'
'You know the friend's name? That'd be a start.'
'We, uh, only met this afternoon.'
'Love at first sight,' Mel said. Trying to figure the guy, nice eyes behind the fringe when he smiled, no psycho vibes. Big all round, the husky type, but no sense of threat with it, a gentle voice. Although maybe that was his schtick. 'Listen,' she said, 'here's an idea. Why don't you ask her friend you know so well where the girl's going on holidays?'
'See,' he said, 'the friend's already gone. This girl, she'll be meeting her. And it's more the friend I'm interested in.'
'This is a travel agency, not a dating service.'
'I know, but --'
'Sorry,' Mel said, 'no can do.'
He held her gaze a second or two, a shaggy bear standing there with his shoulders slumped. Then he shrugged and lumbered to the door. Locked it and flipped the sign around, started back slow, tugging up his t-shirt so Mel could see the pearl-grip butt of a gun sticking out of his pants. Mel soundtracking it -- Kenny Rogers, Coward of the County. Or maybe Ennio.
'Look, uh, Melody,' he said, nodding at her name-tag, 'I really don't want --'
'Is that thing even loaded?'
''Course, yeah.'
'So I don't tell you where the girl's gone, you'll shoot me. Just like that.'
'I'm not saying it'd be easy,' the guy said, 'but --'
'Bullcrap.'
'Sorry?'
'Who're you supposed to be, Eddie G?'
'I was more aiming for Mitchum.'
'Yeah,' Mel said, 'I can see that now, with the sleepy-eyes thing going on. You ever done time for dope?'
'Three months, yeah. Half a pound a weed. I wouldn't have minded so much, it actually was for personal use. Anyway, this girl, where's she going?'
'How come you want her?'
'You first.'
'No, you.'
The guy considered. 'See,' he said, 'I could tell you, yeah, but then you'd be an accessory after the fact.'
'What fact?'
'You don't have to worry about the girl,' he said. 'I mean, she's a cop, yeah. But our beef isn't with her.'
'She's a cop?'
'Yep.'
'Shouldn't she be chasing you?'
'Like I say, she's a friend of a friend. The friend, or friends, they've got money belongs to an associate of mine. So ...'
'How much money?' Mel said.
'I thought this was a travel agency, not an information bureau.'
'Touché. But listen, uh, Bob ...'
'It's Gary.'
'Okay, Gary ...' Mel put her elbows on the counter, leaned in. 'I tell you where she's going, Gary, how much is that worth to you?'
'That depends.'
'On what?'
'I really couldn't say,' Gary said. 'I'm the muscle, not the money-man.'
Frank
'Frank's the victim here,' Bryan told the lead detective. 'You don't get that? He's been set up, dragged into some kidnap scam, had his knee blown out ... I mean, he's the one lying in a hospital bed, okay, makes it a little easier for you to track him down, pin all this bullshit on him, I understand how it's maybe more difficult for you to catch bad guys who're still on their feet, able to walk away, maybe run a few rings around you they feel like a little aerobic exercise. But,' Bryan held up three fingers clamped together, looking to Frank like he was about to execute a Scout's salute, dib-dib-dib, Frank watching with his eye half-open, feigning coma, 'if you're not out of here in three seconds flat you'll be looking at a harassment suit on top of the negligence, I shit you not.'
'When'll he be able to answer questions?' the cop asked the nurse.
'I don't know,' the nurse said. 'Ask the doctor.'
'Where'll I find him?'
'Oh,' the nurse said, edging around the bed to check Frank's saline drip, 'there's a box in the corridor marked 'Doctors', we just pull one out any time we have a question. Just make sure you put him back when you're finished, okay? We hate it when there's loads of doctors running around doing stuff.'
The first cop looked at the other cop, who shrugged. 'We'll be back in the morning,' the first cop said. 'First thing.'
'Visiting hours,' the nurse told their departing backs, 'are from eleven to three.' The second cop, without turning around, flipped her the bird.
When the nurse finally left, Frank opened his eyes all the way. 'Christ, I've been at quieter spaghetti junctions. The fuck'm I paying Blue Riband for?'
'Technically speaking,' Bryan said, 'medical staff have access to you twenty-four-seven. It's for your own good.' Bryan the acid-fried former hippy and Frank's current lawyer, on the basis he was the cheapest legal advice of Frank's regular four-ball partners out at Oakwood. Bryan who'd originally come to Frank with the idea of having Madge snatched, then claiming on the insurance. Which meant, it was only occurring to Frank now, it should be Bryan and not Frank lying in a hospital bed with his knee pureed.
'Frank?'
Frank turned his head, struggling to peer over the sheeted tent erected over the scaffolding protecting his leg, then glimpsed, with a sinking feeling, Genevieve sitting on a chair beside the window.
'You let her in? Fucking hell, Bry.'
'She's claiming common-law, Frank. She's entitled.'
'I godda a question for you, Frank.' Gen stood up, staggered a little, then pointed an unsteady finger. 'How come the cops're saying you hadda one-way tigget to this Haiti place?'
'Didn't you hear Bry?' Frank said. 'The fuckers're trying to frame me. They'll say whatever suits 'em.'
'Why would they say Haiti, Frank? I mean, we were gunna Agapulgo. After you got this ransom. So you shoulda had, the ver' least, two tiggets.'
'I thought visiting hours,' Frank said to Bryan, 'were eleven to three.'
'Gen gets special privileges, Frank. Common-law.'
'We been together,' Frank said, 'what, eight months? Nine? How's that qualify as common-law?'
Gen, outraged, squiggled herself up from the hips, worked some bounce into the fake tits Frank'd paid for, Pinky and Perky. Again with the wavering finger, Frank half-dazzled by the bling reflecting from the fluorescent light off a ring no bigger than a baby elephant's testicle. 'I find out,' she said, 'you were stiffing me ...'
Bryan said, 'Gen? No one's stiffing anyone. I mean, Frank here has responsibilities, he knows that. Bills outstanding. Debts to pay. Frank?'
'I've had a bad day,' Frank said, thumbing the doohickey button, wondering what the fuck was holding up the morphine. 'I mean, in case you hadn't noticed, I was shot. By, it shouldn't really matter, but it does, my ex-wife. So I'd appreciate a little peace and quiet to concentrate on the agony I'm in here, y'know, really soak that fucker up.'
Gen, tottering on four-inch heels, made her way around the bed, leaned in. 'Don't fuggin patronise me, Frank. I won't be fuggin patronised.'
Frank gagged on the stale gin fumes. 'Bry? Seriously, I'm crippled over here. I can't deal with this right now.' Bryan crossed the room, placed his hands on Gen's shoulders to steer her away from the bed. Frank said, 'Oh, and Gen? It's pahtronise.'
Gen swung open-handed from the hip, except the Miu Miu dangling from her elbow snagged on the saline drip and pulled her askew, Bryan behind her getting tangled in the general welter so that they both toppled over, came crashing down on Frank's leg.
Frank, opening his mouth to scream, blacked out so fast he didn't even hear it start.
Madge
'I don't know if I can do this,' Madge said as the red-and-white striped barrier pole went up. The car purred onto the airstrip, twin-engine planes looming from the shadows either side, no sign of the Lear jet Madge had been half-hoping for. The headlights picking up the hangar now, heading straight for it.
'You're already doing it,' Terry said. 'Just relax, it'll be okay.'
'Please. Can we stop a sec?'
'Sure.' Terry said, 'Joe? Would you mind pulling in? Cheers.' He waited until the car rolled to a stop, then turned to her. 'What's wrong?'
'I can't do it.'
'Sure you can.'
'To you, I mean.'
'To me?'
'What if I'm spotted with you?'
'You won't be.'
'But what if I am? You'll get pulled into the whole mess.'
'How? All I'm doing is helping out a friend, she's terrified of this Rossi guy who snatched her. She needs a few days away until she knows the guy's been caught, it's safe to come back. So I'm making it happen.'
'Ray told Karen,' Madge said, this being the bit that'd sobered her up shortly before leaving Terry's place, 'that the last guy brought the cops around, he wound up in four different canals.'
Terry smiled, patted her knee. 'How'll you bring the cops around, Margaret? This cop, Doyle, she told you she'd help with your alibi, right? Just after you shot Frank.'
'That's what she said. But ...'
'Look, according to Ray, this Doyle wants Frank. The cops're going to be anywhere, it's up Frank's ass for arranging a kidnap, attempted extortion, all that. And you rang the kids, right? Jeanie and Liz. Letting 'em know you'd be away for a few days, they're off to Denver skiing anyway. So why would the cops be looking for you?'
'There's the money,' Madge said. 'The ransom.'
'Why would the cops, you were the one was snatched, even think you might have the ransom?' Terry shook his head.' If they're chasing anyone, it'll be Karen and Ray.'
'You think they will?'
'I doubt it. They already have Frank, and probably this guy Rossi, Ray said the guy looked pretty bad when they left him behind in that van savaged by the wolf. And just say you're a cop, you have the ex-husband who set you up to be snatched and the three-time loser who did the actual job. That sounds like a result to me.'
'Except the ransom is missing.'
'An insurance company's money? No cop's busting a hernia to find that. Besides, the insurance company'll be insured against losing the ransom. Stands to reason.'
'I want to do it,' Madge said, 'don't get me wrong. I just don't want anyone getting into trouble on my account.'
'The only way it gets hinky,' Terry said, 'is if the cops or the insurance company know where to find you. This way, flying out of here? We're into London in three hours, and from there we could be going anywhere. No one else knows about the cruise, right?'
'Just Karen and Ray.'
'Not even the twins?'
'The whole point of it,' Madge said, 'it was just me and Karen, getting away from all the shit, the divorce coming on ...'
'So there it is,' Terry said. 'What're you worried about?'
'Oh, silly stuff,' Madge said. 'Y'know, fleeing the country after shooting my ex, with a guy who puts people in four different canals.'
'That's just a bogeyman story,' Terry said. 'Joe? Tell the lady I never put anyone in any canals.'
'It's just a story,' Joe said.
'Meanwhile,' Terry said, 'I'm sitting here waiting to fly out to Europe with a lady who's reminding me right now of Julie Christie, I think it's her eyes. What're you going to do, change your mind and break my heart?'
Rossi
'LeprePorn,' Rossi said, wondering if he was dreaming it, Rossi already out a week and yet to drain the sprouts.
'Internet-only release,' Melody said. 'That way you keep production costs down and your distribution budget is virtually nil. At-Quim-Two-Birds, that's one of ours. Irish lesbians, what they call niche-niche marketing.'
'You're a woman in this town,' Sleeps said, 'looking to write-direct? It's a closed shop. I mean, can you name me even one Irish writer-director, she's a woman?'
Mel in back, hunched forward. Rossi riding shotgun beside Sleeps, a fat spliff smouldering between his fingers. The lights went green. Sleeps eased the Volvo Estate forward.
'The hardest bit,' Mel said, 'I mean apart from keeping a straight face? Coming up with the names. Like, half the time you're wondering what the original guys were thinking, if they weren't subconsciously wanting to make blue movies all along. I mean, seriously -- Eat the Peach? I Went Down?' She shook her head. 'We did PS, I Fucked You 1, 2 and 3 last year. This girl, her husbands keep dying and coming back as ghosts to, y'know ...'
'Fuck her.'
'Pretty much, yeah. In the third one, the twist is all three come back at the same time.'
'Like in a gangbang?'
'Yep.'
'Except,' Sleeps said, 'she's into it.'
'Sure, she loves these guys. I mean, she married 'em all. Had a thing, for some reason we never got around to exploring, for exclusively German guys with big hair and fat johnsons. Take the next left,' she told Sleeps, 'then right into the housing estate. It's the third on the left, there'll be a white Fiat parked outside.'
'But now you're ready to break out,' Rossi said. 'Move into the mainstream.'
'I've been ready,' Mel said. 'I'm past ready.'
'With this story,' Sleeps said, 'sounds to me like Bonnie and Clyde, except set in Greece.'
'With the twist,' Mel said, 'that Bonnie and Clyde, only they're called Judy and Jack, they're into kidnap.'
Rossi glanced at Sleeps. 'Sounds familiar,' he said.
'Okay,' Mel said. 'But there's this cop, she's tight with Jack and Judy, at least she thinks she is until they pull a switch, leave her behind handcuffed to the guy masterminding the kidnaps, then take off for a Mediterranean cruise. Not realising they're not the only Bonnie and Clyde in the picture. And this other Bonnie and Clyde, believing the money's theirs, they're following the cop chasing Jack and Judy, who's heading for the Med to track 'em down, get her rep back.'
'Or,' Sleeps said, 'at this point the cop could just be suspended and schlepping off on holiday, we just don't know. Maybe doing everything she can to forget she ever met this Jack and Judy, they made her a laughing stock.'
'So where in the Med,' Rossi said, 'is this cruise going from?'
'Cute,' Mel said, 'but no cigar.'
'See,' Rossi said to Sleeps, 'this is the bit I'm not getting. We're taking her with us, right? Except she's the only one who knows where we're going.'
Sleeps considered. 'About the size of it,' he said.
'That's it there, Gary. See the white Fiat?'
Sleeps indicated left, pulled in to the kerb. Rossi said, 'So you're hitting us up for points on the bag, you steer us in the right direction and we nail Karen and Ray.' Mel nodded. 'And you're tagging along for the ride, soaking it all up for this movie.'
'If you were me,' Mel said, 'would you trust you to come back with my share, just hand it over?'
Rossi conceded the point. 'What I'm getting at,' he said, 'is I'm not hearing you come across. With, y'know, points in this movie you'll be making off our story.'
In the end, Rossi volunteering his services as script consultant, Mel agreed to take them on board. No way she was shelling out upfront but she was okay with cutting them in for points if she got a deal, Rossi asking twelve but settling for a back-end of five on the gross.
'That's gross-gross,' he said. 'Merchandise, the works.'
'Deal,' Mel said, reaching into the front to shake their hands in turn. 'Okay,' she said, 'just give me ten minutes to pack a bag. Oh, by the way?'
'What's that?'
'If we get caught, I'm your hostage. I mean, you dragged me along against my will, right?'
Melody
Mel went straight upstairs, pulled the fake Louis Vuitton down off the top of the wardrobe and wiped the dust off with a thermal vest she found in the laundry basket, then threw in the essentials, found her passport, packed a few books, some spiral-bound shorthand pads, a handful of blue Uniballs with the nice flow, then dragged it back downstairs, bumping it on every step.
She stuck her head around the living-room door, to where her father and two brothers were slumped watching a football game flickering on the TV, all three in roughly the same position, hands clasped on their midriffs.
'I just got a last-minute deal,' she said. 'I'm off to Greece, flying out tonight.'
One of her brothers grunted. Her father turned his head in her direction, although without taking his eyes from the screen. 'Who's going with you, love?'
'Just a few of the girls. We'll only be gone a week.'
'Need a lift to the airport?'
'No, that's fine. I've a taxi waiting outside.'
'You alright for a few quid?'
'Fine, Dad. Thanks.'
'Okay.' He beckoned her on as he turned his head back to the TV again. She went across to him, planted a kiss on the top of his head. 'Text us when you get in,' he said. 'Let us know you're safe.'
'Will do.'
Mel closed the door again, picked up the suitcase and wheelied it out the front door and down the path. Sleeps got out as she approached the car, went around the back and popped the trunk, took the suitcase from her and lifted it in.
'So where to now?' he said.
'The airport. Where else?'
'What I thought,' Sleeps said. 'Only thing is, I don't fly.'
Frank
The pain, Jesus, Frank'd never had anything like it. Even reaching for the push-button doohicky hanging from the headboard sent agonising bolts shooting up through his thigh, into his spine, the electrical impulses frying his brain. Frank thumbing the doohicky like he was sending out Morse code, S-S-S-S-S-S ...
Like, where the fuck were the nurses? You pay through the nose for Blue Riband, the least you expect is a little service and at least one nurse who didn't have a face like a pot of boiled frogs.
Jeeeezzzzzusssssss ...
Frank's thumb a blur clickety-clicking the doohicky, except even twitching his thumb was setting off depth charges in his shin that pulsed through every nerve and --
The door opened, light pouring through. The glare half-blinding him as a nurse stepped into the room.
'Jesus bungee-jumping Christ,' Frank said through gritted teeth. 'The fuck took you? I could be dying over here.'
'Sorry about that, Frankie,' said a deep voice.
Frank cranked one eyelid half-open. A male nurse? 'Who the fuck're you?'
The guy, in white trousers, some kind of pansy smock, advanced to the bed. 'How're you doin' there, Frankie?' he said. 'You making out?'
Despite the pain, Frank's instincts were still solid. He knew this because his scrotum crawled, balls retracting. He peered at the smock for a name-tag but there was none. 'They sent a janitor?' he said, hoping -- praying -- to be extra outraged any second now.
'That's right, Frankie.' The nurse had a squarish head, a twice-broken nose. 'A janitor, to take out the trash.'
Frank opened his mouth to scream, not really planning any words as such, just something shrill and loud, except a fleshy hand clamped down across his nose and chin with enough force to punch his breath back down his throat and jam a blockage somewhere at the top of his lungs. He choked, eyes bugging. The guy raised a warning forefinger, placed it against his lips. 'Ssssh, Frankie. No sense both of us ending up shit creek, eh?'
A warm wetness spurted between Frank's thighs. Then, immobilised by the pressure of the hand forcing his chin down onto his chest, Frank felt the guy reach behind and slip a pillow out from under his head. As the suffocating cloud came down on his face, its softness the heaviest weight Frank had ever known, he made claws of his hands and started swiping.
No joy.
The last thing Frank ever heard was the guy whispering, 'Frankie? Terry Swipes says bonny voyage ...'
THURSDAY
Karen
'You're paying ten grand for a passport,' Karen said, 'you expect, I dunno, something a bit more flattering than Bridget Fonda in a wind tunnel.'
'The guy turned it around in three hours.' Ray, still buzzed on the pills, had volunteered to drive while he still could. The fluorescent orange lights gleaming weirdly on his newly blond hair. DIY kits, Ray a little bit James Dean with the blond quaff. Karen'd gone for an electric-blue rinse. 'Besides,' he said, 'who looks good in their passport?'
'You do.' Karen comparing passports. 'What'd you do, get it took professional?'
'The guy got paid, yeah, he's a pro. Anything we're forgetting?'
'Passports,' Karen said, checking off on her fingers. 'Tan oil. Bug spray. Gun. What else?'
'Money,' Ray said, nodding at the khaki duffel at Karen's feet, the ransom that had fallen from half a mill to two hundred grand to one-six-five in a little under fourteen hours. This before Madge got her cut, eighty-two and change. Karen having her very own Black Friday.
'Money,' she said. 'Check.'
'So that's everything.'
'Well,' Karen said, 'I'm down the cell phone Rossi swiped up at the lake. And then there's the whole wardrobe I'm leaving behind, all my personal shit, y'know, photos of my dead mother. But other than that, yeah, we're cool.'
'Doyle knows where you live, Kar.'
'I know. I'm just saying.'
'You want to risk it?'
'Nope.'
'You're sure?'
'Don't tempt me, Ray.' Karen wondering, Christ, when does it end? Like, first her father beats her mother to death, taking a slow fourteen years to do it. Then she gets tangled up with Rossi, who was in more than he was out in the ten years Karen knew him. She'd done it, though. Survived her father, got the bastard put away, then got past Rossi, put an actual life together. A life that included, okay, once in a while sticking up gas stations and post offices for chump change, using Rossi's Ducati, his .44. All this to keep Anna in kennels, the wolf-husky combo tagged a dangerous breed. A life, sure, that couldn't last.
But Karen would've come up with something else when the time came. Karen, she'd learned to duck when she had to, dive when she could. Except she'd have done it her own way. This? Hightailing it out of town, one step ahead of the posse ...
'I can understand,' Ray said, 'you're concerned, starting again somewhere strange. But take Anna. I mean, she came all the way from Siberia. Talk about not being able to speak the language ...' When Karen didn't smile he said, 'Anna's doing okay, isn't she? Found someone to look after her, she wasn't even looking. Didn't even know how to look.'
'She lost an eye,' Karen said. 'Got a bullet in the head that could've killed her.'
'Except it didn't. She's alive and kicking. Or rather,' Ray said, 'alive and doped to the eyeballs in the back of a van. But she's making out.'
'Just about.'
They drove in silence until he turned off the M50, heading south for the ferry port. 'Hey,' Ray said, 'how about Terry and Madge? Who'd a thunk it, huh?'
'The girl's a free agent, she's still kicking it. Why not?'
'I hear you. You and her weren't friends, y'know, I'd be ... Hey, I'm kidding.' When she still didn't smile he said, 'So how do you think the twins'll take to Terry Swipes?'
'The twins, they make it through the next time they see Madge, they'll like whoever she tells them to like. She's gone up through the gears since they seen her last.'
'How d'you mean?'
'Frank was supposed to pay for the twins' trip to Aspen, their flights, the works. Except Frank being Frank, he left them in the lurch, five grand's worth. So the twins maxed out Madge's credit card.'
'Ouch.'
'She only found out trying to book the flights to Athens. I don't think I've ever seen her so crazy. Well,' a watery half-grin, 'apart from when she shot Frank.'
'She didn't get to book the flights, huh?'
'Nope. And then had a screaming match down the phone with this bitch telling her --'
'How about the cruise? She get to book that?'
'Sure. She booked that first, then went looking for flights. Why, what's wrong?'
'You think the cops, with Madge missing, won't check her credit card to see if they can't track her that way?'
'Maybe they'll think,' Karen said slowly, 'she's gone to Aspen.'
'They won't think it for long.'
Karen slumped back, drained. Jesus, every time she turned around it was something else. Karen wondering if maybe she shouldn't stop turning around, just for once go in a straight line. 'You think the Greek cops'll give a crap about Frank?' she said. 'I mean, there's all that jurisdiction stuff, right?'
'It's still European Union, Kar. There's protocols, agreements.'
'So she'd be screwed.'
'Madge?' Ray nodded. 'Except we're the ones brought her to Terry and never mentioned the whole credit card deal. And if he gets hauled in, aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice? Anna won't be the only one missing an eye.'
Doyle
Doyle'd never liked flying, especially when they served dinner. Trying to pretend cruising at thirty thousand feet was so normal there was no reason you shouldn't be eating plastic chicken too.
Then the washrooms, designed to fit anorexic dwarves. Doyle freshening her lippy while the plane jitterbugged around the sky, electric storms over the Balkans. Doyle wondering if she wasn't overdoing the gloss. Trying to achieve a delicate balance, needing to look hot enough Niko would help her out but not so smoking the guy'd take it as a come-on. She'd decided to skip the eyeliner, it was just asking for trouble, a poke in the eye, when there came a tapping on the door. The stew, telling Doyle to return to her seat, they were starting the descent.
Doyle wobbled back up the aisle, edged into the window seat and looked down on Athens, wondering how Niko'd look, two or three years now since she'd seen him last. He'd been thin then, sallow and tall. Doyle liked them tall but not as thin as Niko, the guy a greyhound, all cock and ribs. Cock, mainly. Had this habit, too, of looking at a girl from under half-closed lids over the beaky nose that he thought was sexy but made him look like a lizard with cataracts.
He'd kiss both cheeks, Doyle knew that. Long, lingering smooches. All Doyle was hoping, as she switched the big fake emerald from the baby finger of her right hand to the ring-finger on her left, was Niko'd remembered to brush.
Niko, he liked his tzatziki heavy on the garlic.
Rossi
Rossi had always imagined that if he ever made it onto the set of a blue movie he'd be a little more jazzed. It didn't help that the set doubled as the props room. 'So you're a getaway driver,' he said, 'except you're narcoleptic, nod off when the mood takes.'
Sleeps checking out his reflection in the full-length mirror, the chauffeur's cap perched at a rakish angle over one eye. 'I was narcoleptic all along,' he said. 'You're the one picked me for wheelman.'
Rossi deep-sixed the jay, held it down for a count of ten, a tip he'd picked up at anger management class inside. 'Okay,' he said. 'But let's call this a fresh start. Clean slate. Is there anything else I should know?'
'Well, I'm allergic to penicillin,' Sleeps said. 'Plus I'm borderline diabetic, on account of I'm a little big-boned. Except I can't remember, do I eat sugar to keep my levels up? Or do I avoid it in case it blows my head off?'
'I'll blow your head off,' Rossi growled. 'Worry about me.'
Sleeps nodded. 'Lee Marvin, right? Point Blank.' Then told Melody, 'The doc reckons it was a lack of nutrition when I was a kid, screwed my system.'
'A lack of nutrition?' Rossi said. 'Sleeps, no disrespect man, but you look like you ate the Michelin Man.'
'I was deprived in the womb. My mother, God rest her, was a juicer, drinking meths, the works.'
'Okay.' Rossi mulled it over while he had another toke. 'But what's any of that have to do with not flying?'
'Nothing. That's from when I went to the funfair, going up on the Whirly Chairs.'
'And?'
'They were whirly chairs, Rossi. Thirty feet up. Forty miles an hour.'
'Yeah, but ... They crashed? What?'
'I just figured, in a plane? You're five miles up doing a million miles an hour. I mean, do the math.'
'The statistical chance of being killed in a plane-crash?' Mel said, fluffing out her veil. 'It's the same as being kicked to death by a herd of wild donkeys. That's a whole herd, by the way, not just one donkey.'
'Twenty-nine people died last week,' Sleeps said, 'in Uzbekistan, a 767 that didn't exactly clear the airport fence, came down tits up in a swamp. So that's twenty-nine herds of wild donkeys, at least twenty-nine, out there roaming the steppes.'
'You were a kid,' Rossi said, 'up on the whirly chairs. So it makes sense you got a fright.'
'At the funfair?' Sleeps shook his head. 'That was last month. I made a pact with God.'
Rossi squeezed his eyes closed, massaged his temples. 'With God?'
'There and then, in mid-air. The deal being, if I don't fly, God won't kill me in a plane-crash.'
'You'd be surprised how many people won't fly since the terrorists started acting out,' Mel said.
Rossi with a pain in his ear like he'd shipped a stray bayonet. No, the hole where his ear used to be. 'Listen, Dollface, if you don't have nothing to say might help, I'd appreciate you keeping your cakehole --'
'What I'm saying,' she said, 'is lots of people won't fly these days. But they still go on holiday.'
Sleeps grinned. 'The ferry,' he said. 'Of course.'
'The best part?' Melody said. 'At the port they don't really pay too much attention to passports and suchlike when you're heading out.' She squeezed past the leather couch, used her hip to bump Sleeps away from the mirror. Sleeps bumping her back, getting a grind going on. 'I mean,' she said, 'you were saying you need to get passports, right?'
'That was a private fuckin conversation,' Rossi said.
'You losing an ear and all,' Sleeps pointed out, 'you've been a doing a lot of shouting ever since.'
Mel turned all the way around, frowning at herself in the mirror. 'Does my ass look big in this?'
'Not if you're planning to screen a movie,' Rossi said.
'Hey,' Sleeps said. 'No personals, okay?'
Mel shrugged it off, went through to a side room. Came back holding a fat envelope, from which she drew a bundle of passports.
'Holy shit,' Sleeps said. 'Are they real?'
'Most of them, yeah.'
'You get much call for passports in blue movies?' Rossi said.
'These German guys we have in the movies? They're mostly not German. They want to come here, y'know, get into the EU through the back door, our guys'll bring 'em in, no problem. Except then they need to work it off before they get their passports back.'
'By screwing in blue movies,' Rossi said, awed. 'Christ, it's a dirty job ...'
'When our guys say they'll get in through the back door,' Mel said, 'they're actually saying, y'know, the back door.'
'What about the girls?' Sleeps said. 'They trafficked too?'
'The girls are mostly Irish. Models, like. Only in Ireland there's enough work for about two and a half models. So they're going the other way, getting out.' Mel put the bundle of passports on the coffee table. 'Just make sure the one you pick is still in date. Don't get us screwed on some schoolboy error.'
'Us?' Rossi said.
'A three-way split,' Mel said. 'It's that,' she added, 'or I tell you she's gone to Timbukthree.'
Rossi, helpless, looked over at Sleeps. Sleeps just shrugged. 'A three-way split of something is at least something,' he said. 'Without Mel we got fuck-all.'
Rossi suppressed the urge to punch himself in the head. 'I got an idea,' he said. 'How about we just pin you to the fuckin wall and --'
'Not on my watch,' Sleep said.
'I'm guessing,' Mel said, 'and I might be wrong here, but I'm guessing you're broke. I mean, driving into Europe, you'll need to gas up the car once in a while, maybe eat.'
'You're going to fund us?' Sleeps said.
'Call it an investment. A straight ten per cent on my outlay. Except that's ten per cent,' she warned, 'on top of the credit card interest. All of which comes off the gross before we split the take.'
'Christ,' Rossi said. 'Why don't you just put on a balaclava?'
'You're kidding,' Melody said, giving herself one last twirl in the mirror, flattening down her bodice, the pleated ivory-tinged skirt billowing out in her wake. 'And hide a perfectly good tiara?'
Ray
Ray hung up and threaded back through the tables to where Karen was sitting in the bay window overlooking the port, the place bustling now under a sodium glare, the ferry like a tipped-over Christmas tree out along the pier. Karen scoping for guys lounging on corners, reading newspapers in the pre-dawn chill, maybe talking into their collars once in a while.
'No joy?' she said, reading his expression.
'It wouldn't be like Terry not to carry a phone,' he said. 'But I'm wondering, the guy's taking a cruise, maybe he figures he won't need one this once.'
'Unlikely, though.'
'Yeah. He's probably knocked it off for take-off, forgot to turn it back on.' He sipped some vodka-lime. 'So, Rossi -- what d'you think?'
'I think you're being paranoid.' Then she grinned.
'What's funny?'
'Nothing. Just something Rossi used to say.'
'What?'
'Whenever he got seriously pissed off? He'd say he was paranoid. As in, par-annoyed.'
'Hilarious, yeah.' Ray held up his slinged arm. 'A foot to the left and he'd be a comic genius.'
'I'm just saying --'
'Forget it. What about the cruise?'
Karen had a crooked twist to her jaw from when she bust it on a porcelain sink to get her father put away. Now she did the thing where her lower jaw twitched, letting Ray know, even if she didn't know she was doing it, how he'd snuck up close to some line she'd drawn in her head.
'Why would Madge tell Rossi she was taking a cruise?' she said.
'I'm not saying she told him anything.' Ray believed this wasn't the best time to point out that Madge had confessed to Rossi she was his mother. 'But if there's even a possibility she mentioned it, then taking chances is a good way to get Terry nabbed.'
'And Madge.'
'Madge, you know her better than me, maybe she can arrange for a hit from behind bars. Terry I know for fact.'
'Okay,' Karen said. 'But even presuming she told him, so what? The guy's probably in ICU right now. Anna damn near chewed his head off.'
Ray considered that. 'Any chance he'd tip off the cops?'
'Rossi? Tip 'em over a cliff, maybe.'
'Okay, except the cops aren't even the half of it. He could sell us on.'
'Sell us ...?'
'Say Rossi puts the word out. Who we are, where we're going. How much we're carrying. Then, someone hits us, Rossi gets points on the bag. A finder's fee.'
'Jesus. Whatever happened to honour among thieves?'
'It probably got thieved. Also, we don't know for fact Rossi's in ICU. And what we don't know for fact we don't presume.'
'Because,' Karen said, sounding to Ray more irritated than his caution deserved, 'that's a good way of going about getting ourselves nabbed.'
'Correct.'
'You're still coming down off those pills,' she said. 'So you're paranoid, like I said. Maybe you should just chill out, relax.'
'You want me to chill?' Ray buzzing on pure adrenaline by now, the tank running dry. 'Try some guy who's not Rossi,' he said, slowing it down, keeping it simple, 'he doesn't give a fuck who you are, thinks you're carrying two hundred gees, the guy's coming at you from you don't know where the fuck he's coming from. He'll chill me alright.' Karen staring now, dead-eyed. 'Or try an upstairs bunk, y'know, on a ten-stretch for conspiracy to kidnap, defraud and extort, with some bull dyke giving you the eye, waving her homemade dildo around. Think you'd feel relaxed then?'
Karen chewed the inside of where her jaw was twisted, went back to scoping out the port. A commotion down below, a Beamer beep-beeping, white ribbons draped from its wing mirrors. Ray caught a glimpse of a bride making these wristy little waves like she was some kind of princess, a tiara sparkling under the harsh lights.
'Kar? It's only in the movies people get away. In real life they're getting away. Always. I mean, it's a constant state of getting away.'
'So we're looking over our shoulders,' Karen said, stirring her vodka-coke with a pink swizzle stick, still staring after the Beamer. 'All the time.'
'Running away,' Ray agreed, 'if at possible, backwards.'
'Maybe we should get mirrors,' she said, glancing across at him now. 'One for each shoulder.'
'I'd say one shoulder should do it. No sense in looking ridiculous, right?'
'Okay. Just one thing.'
'What's that?'
'Don't call me Kar.' She plucked the swizzle-stick from the vodka-coke, jabbed it playfully at his right eye. 'My father used to called me Kar.'
Ray took the hit. 'Okay by me,' he said.
Sleeps
'You know what I'm thinking?' Sleeps said, waving a kid-gloved hand to acknowledge the guy in the Renault letting him through, the guy tooting his horn as they filtered in ahead. 'I'm thinking this might even work.'
'It's all about the visual impact,' Melody said. 'I mean, it's already working. Am I right?'
'So far,' Sleeps agreed, 'like a dream.' Sleeps in a win-win situation for maybe the first time in his entire life. If he got caught, he was aiding-and-abetting, going down for soft time -- sure, there'd been gunplay up at the lake, a cop involved, except Sleeps had been spark out in the gully at the time.
The upside? If they made it he was driving a Beamer into Europe, the Beamer purring like a cat with three tails. He glanced in the rearview, caught Rossi scratching at the foxy-looking fake beard. 'You'd want to leave that alone, Rossi,' he said. 'At least until we get on board. Then, we grab a cabin, you can take it off.'
'Two cabins,' Mel said. 'It'd look a bit odd if you were to, y'know, share a room with the honeymooning couple. Being the driver and all.'
'Yes'm,' Sleeps said, tipping the brim of his cap.
'All I'm saying,' Rossi grumbled, 'is who the fuck goes away in their wedding gear? Shouldn't we be wearing something casual for the ferry?'
'We're running late,' Mel said, adjusting her veil. 'After the ceremony? It was raining when we wanted to take the photos.'
'Plus,' Sleeps said, 'you got that visual impact you're talking about.'
'Exactly.' Mel gave a preeny little wave out the window. 'Even before we get there they've jumped to the conclusion, we're just married.'
Sleeps nodded up the line of cars. 'They're waving everyone through, Rossi. I haven't seen them stop anyone yet.'
'Law of fuckin averages,' Rossi said. 'You're guaranteed they'll stop us.'
'To congratulate us, maybe,' Mel said. 'Take some pictures.'
Sleeps said, 'Mel? This might be a good time to tell us where we're going. In case they ask.'
'Okay,' she said. 'The good news is we're going to Sicily. Palermo.'
'You're shitting me,' Rossi said. 'Sicily?'
'Why, is that a problem?'
'You kidding?' Rossi thumped a thumb into his chest. 'I'm half Sicilian.'
'You are?'
'Absofuckinlutely. Tell her, Sleeps.'
'He's half-Sicilian,' Sleeps confirmed. Rossi with this fantasy how his father was some Mafia guy, had to bunk off back to the motherland after knocking up Rossi's mother, Interpol halfway up his crevice. Sleeps'd asked around. The word was Rossi's old man was the son of a guy owned an Italian chip shop up around Rathmines, got Shirley, half-simple and still working the canal on weekend nights, up the pole back in the day. 'So what's the bad news?' he said.
'We need to be there Friday night, eight o'clock.'
'That's what,' Sleeps said, closing one eye, checking the clock on the dashboard, 'forty-odd hours? You want me to drive to Sicily in forty hours?'
'Think you can do it?'
'A normal guy,' Sleeps said, 'would need to sleep, what, sixteen hours between now and then. So that cuts you down to twenty-four.' He honked the horn in response to a toot-toot from a Volkswagen bus alongside. 'And I'm narcoleptic.'
'I know a place,' Rossi said, 'we can pick up some good crank. Crystal meth.'
Sleeps started whistling Tulips From Amsterdam, then checked his uniform was buttoned to the throat, rolling up now to passport control. 'Just out of curiosity,' he said, 'the chauffeur, in Drilling Miss Daisy? He was the one did the drilling, right?'
'He did his fair share,' Mel said, handing the passports forward. 'Listen, I meant to ask -- what's the going rate for passports these days?'
'Rate?' Rossi said.
Madge
Madge lay awake awhile listening to the gurgling in her tummy drown out the drip-drip of the tap in the bathroom, the dull buzz of a moped crossing the empty square, the yawn and stretch of a city slowly waking to another day. She'd known, last night, that she'd suffer the consequences of eating lobster so late. But what was a girl to do? Terry'd rung ahead, arranged it all, had the hotel set them up with a table in the room, candles flickering. The place not far from the Spanish Steps, overlooking a square -- no, a piazza -- with a fountain big enough to wash a polo team, horses and all.
It hadn't looked much from outside -- discreet, Terry'd assured her, boutique -- but inside was a whole different world, the lobby looking vaguely Edwardian to Madge with its pillars and Turkish carpets and potted palms. Madge, if she squinted, could imagine herself taking the Grand Tour, Henry James skulking in the undergrowth sniffing some young girl's bloomers. Or was that Joyce? Madge never could remember who the knickers freak was.
She groped on the bedside locker for her watch, frowning as she tried to make out the time, then wondered about the time difference, was she an hour ahead? Or behind? Or, wait, was there even a time difference? Not that it mattered, she was awake now, needing something to settle her stomach, a nice creamy latte. She slipped out from under the sheet, watching Terry all the while, not wanting to wake him -- not that she had any regrets there, Terry'd been rough when she wanted him to be, sure, although he preferred it tender and slow himself, and hadn't let her down, even though Madge'd been more than willing to make allowances, the guy with a lot going for him even before he crawled into bed beside her, smelling fresh, this after taking a shower, whispering, 'Hey, if you're tired, y'know, I'm kinda tired too. Like, what's the hurry, am I right ...?'
No, Madge just wanted to savour the moment. The early stillness, the sense that the whole of Rome, the Eternal City, was out there poised, holding its breath. Waiting for Madge to come out to play and make it perfect.
She decided she'd shower later, she wouldn't be gone that long anyway. Dressed casual, light sweater and slacks, a low heel on the strappy sandals in case she had to walk any distance. The guy on Reception was as helpful as he could be speaking Italian, Madge's knowledge of the language extending as far as Gucci, Armani, Fendi and Prada -- still, she got the gist from the way he waved his arms around like a helicopter going down in flames: out the front door, angle left across the piazza, cut a hard right down the second street she came to.
She was brisk going across the piazza, loving the echo of her heels on the air that still had a crisp chill to it, and was surprised to discover that the coffee shop, finding it first try, was already half-full. Professionals mainly, with their power suits and gleaming leather satchels, glowing tans, hair perfect, kohl and blusher subtle but perfectly applied. And that was just the chaps. Madge, wishing now she'd at least glanced in the mirror on the way out, slunk down the back and found a high-stool at the counter running along the rear wall. The vibe smug, a gang of cats plotting to hijack a milk-float ...
Christ, even the middle-aged women looked to Madge like Sophia Loren's nieces. As for the satchels, the staccato chatter into headsets ... Madge, with a pang, wondered how'd she fare in their world, cutting deals, making and shaking at, what -- she glanced at her watch -- Jesus, six-thirty in the morning. Or was it seven-thirty? Five-thirty?
Didn't matter. This time of the morning, generally speaking, and for about ten years or so, Madge would be turning over for her second sleep, giving the hangover some me-time, vaguely aware of Frank through the fuzzy dullness as he banged drawers and cursed a missing sock.
Madge sipped her latte, grinned to herself. Frank, the useless waste of space, wouldn't be needing any more than one sock for some time to come ...
The joy didn't last. Hating herself for feeling guilty, she'd been hoping she'd left all that baggage behind, travelling light, she took her latte up to the guy behind the counter and mimed making a phone-call, then asked for some change. He pointed out a booth to the right of the door and then mimed sliding a credit card into a slot. Madge tugged the folding door closed behind her, balanced her latte on the narrow ledge. Then, taking a deep breath, she dialed Jeanie's cell.
The plan being to leave a message, no way Jeanie'd be up and about at this ungodly --
'Hello?'
'Jeanie?'
The girl sounding so doleful, probably still coming down from last night, Madge couldn't tell who it was.
'Moms?'
'Jeanie, how many times do I have to tell you, don't call me --'
The wail that came shrieking down the line shivered Madge to her very marrow. 'Oh Mommmmmmmmmmms. What are we going to do?'
'Jeanie? Calm down, you'll still get to Aspen. It's only your father's leg that's out of commission. He can still sign a cheque, right?'
And then Jeanie blurted out a joke, a sucker punchline that caught Madge just below the ribcage, pounding through her gut to fetch up hard against her spine. The coffee shop lights flickered, came and went, or maybe that was Madge reeling away, dizzy ...
She came to hunkered in the bottom of the booth wearing most of a secondhand lobster-latte combo down the front of her sweater like a sloppy tie. The counter jockey, distraught, knocking on the glass door of the booth, shouting something, pointing at Madge's feet, which were wedged against the bottom of the door. Over his shoulders a horde of impeccably coiffed hair-dos craning for a better look. The phone dangling just above her right ear making these weird metallic chirps that sounded like Jeanie doing an R2D2 impression.
'Moms? Are you there? Moms?'
Madge, it was all she could think to do, closed her eyes and clicked her heels and wished herself half a world away.
Melody
Mel came awake fast, immediately aware of the cabin's confines, the strange pressure that goes with sleeping beneath the water-line. She stumbled across to the tiny bathroom and just about made it, upchucking as she arrived at the aluminium toilet so that the puke sprayed against the back of the bowl.
Her gut was still spasming, a reflex, when a soft knockity-knock came at the door. 'Hold on,' she called, squeezing some toothpaste onto her forefinger and massaging it into her upper gum. Then she padded across the cabin. 'Who's there?' she whispered.
'It's me. Gary.'
She opened the door a crack. 'What's wrong?'
'We'll be docking in an half-an-hour. I just wanted to make sure you were up.'
'Okay, thanks.'
'You need a hand with your bags?'
'No, that's okay.' He turned to go. 'Hey,' she said, 'have you got a sec?'
'Sure.'
Melody opened the door, let him in, closed it quickly behind him. He wrinkled his nose and said, 'Hey, you okay?'
'Fine, yeah.' She smiled wanly. 'I guess I haven't got my sea-legs yet.'
She got into bed and pulled the covers up, gesturing for him to sit on the foot of the bunk.
'Nice pee-jays,' he said.
Mel wearing the white silk nightie dotted with little honey-bees, each with a speech-bubble saying Beeyoutiful. Sleeps back in civvies now, wearing a baggy t-shirt that said, 'Cops Uncouth to Youth'.
She nodded, accepting the compliment. 'Listen, Gary, about Rossi.'
He held up a hand to stall her. 'You don't have to worry about him, Mel. He talks a big game, but ... I mean, he shot Ray, okay, but the way Rossi tells it, he was firing off a warning and Ray was running, he slipped, fell into it. Complete fluke. Anyway, Ray had no business getting involved. The shit was between Rossi and Karen, she stole his stuff, he just wanted it back.'
'See,' Mel said, 'this is what I don't get. It's all about Rossi but you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, you'll do his time for him.'
'It sounds, I know, what you might call defeatist. But I got a plan.'
'That involves, you said, going to prison.' Mel a little concerned that Sleeps' ambitions were screwing with her story arc.
'Doing time,' he said, 'yeah, it can be a bitch. 'Specially if you go in with the wrong frame of mind. Except the worst bit? Like, once you get past sharing a cell with six other blokes, the shit food, being locked down twenty-three hours -- it's the boredom.'
'That and the gang-rape in the showers.'
'I'm not saying,' Sleeps shrugged, 'it doesn't happen.' He gestured down at himself. 'But I'm no one's idea of Brad Pitt, y'know? Or Angelina Jolie. I got an ass, someone wants to stick something in it, they better be packing about twelve inches, y'know?'
Mel had a pang of empathy, the guy about 300 pounds of wobble and feeling every ounce. 'Beauty's only skin deep, Gary.'
'Skin deep and a mile wide.' He brushed it off. 'Anyway, the boredom? I got that plan. Taking courses and shit, get me an education. On the out? No one's letting me into any college. I got no exams, didn't get to finish school, and anyway, there's the fees, all the books you gotta buy.' He shook his head. 'Inside? They're throwing books at you. Christ, they get one guy a year they can point to, say look at him, he's rehabilitated, that's their grants for next year looked after. Then, when I'm not reading and shit? I've got the narcolepsy, I'm snoozing left, right and centre.'
'Reading and sleeping,' Melody said, considering. 'Maybe that's not such a bad plan.'
'Like, the whole point of hanging out with Rossi is the boy's done three jolts already, it's only a matter of time before he goes back inside. I'm just hoping to steer him into something that doesn't carry the actual death penalty.' He shrugged. 'But when he goes, Mel, he'll take everyone around him down too.'
'You're worried about me?' Mel said. 'But I'm your hostage. If Rossi gets --'
'When.'
'When, okay. When Rossi gets caught, I go back home.'
'Because you'll just explain how Rossi kidnapped you, took you along.'
'Exactly.'
'You speak French? Italian?'
'I don't follow.'
'I'm just saying, wherever we get caught, they probably won't speak a lot of English. What they call the nuances'll probably get lost in translation.'
'So we call the consul.'
'Or maybe the ambassador.'
'Well, whatever.'
'Because guys like that, they're just sitting by their phones hoping some low-life somersaults into the crap, needs bailing out.'
Melody thought that over. 'Okay,' she said. 'I'll take that one on board. But how do I know you're not just angling to get back to a two-way split with Rossi?'
'Two-way, three-way, who gives a rat's ass? There's no split, Mel. I mean, Rossi's chasing this cop 'cos he thinks she's chasing Madge, on the basis Karen's with her. Meanwhile the cop's probably on holiday. This is even supposing,' he said, 'Karen's hooking up with Madge. Or that she'll have the cash with her if she does.'
'The ear,' Melody murmured. 'You're forgetting his ear.'
Sleeps nodded. 'You got a guy, okay, he's upstairs right now in a fucking tux and fedora, a false beard, he's missing an ear and drinking Woo-Woos on top of goofballs enough to stun the US Marine corps. I mean, Mel -- this is a guy who's all-time hero is Napoleon 'cos the guy was small and Italian.'
Mel, her fingers twitching to shape themselves around a pencil, said: 'So what're you suggesting?'
'You need to duck out. Soon as we dock, turn around and take the next ferry home.'
'Just run away,' Mel said, 'from what's maybe the only shot I'll ever have to get out from under.'
'There's worse things than being under.'
'There's better things too.'
He stared. Mel didn't blink. 'Well,' he said, hauling himself upright, 'you can't say you weren't warned.' Standing over her now, his bulk sagging, resigned to it. 'And when the shit hits the fan, I'll do my best, say how we dragged you along. But no one's ever listened to me my entire life. No reason they'll start now.'
Mel gestured for him to sit down again, then leaned forward to take his hand. 'Gary? I'll listen to you. Anytime you want to talk, I'm here.' She let go of his hand and reached the notepad and pen off the bedside locker, saying, 'Why don't you start with this FARCO thing. What's all that about?'
Karen
'That's him alright,' Ray said, adjusting the rearview to watch Rossi cross the forecourt, flares flapping, headed for the Beamer parked off to the side of the gas station.
Karen, arms folded, watched in the wing mirror. 'You think I wouldn't know Rossi? Even wearing a poxy beard?'
'Who's the big guy?'
'No idea.'
'His muscle?'
'How would I know, Ray? I never seen him before.'
'I'm only asking.'
'Okay. Only next time? Ask me something I might know.'
Ray sipped some coffee and chewed lightly on the rim of the cardboard beaker. 'Know what I'm thinking?' he said.
Karen nodded, grim. 'We go over there, drag him out of the fucking car and put a round in each knee.'
'Tempting,' Ray said. 'But first let's see if there's other options.'
'Like what?'
'Like how this doesn't actually change anything.'
'Are you insane? The sick fuck's sitting right there.'
'He's not over here. Not pointing a rod at your face, wanting the money. I'm saying,' Ray said, 'he doesn't know we're here. And there's no way he can know what we're driving. We could spin all the way down to Athens behind him, keeping an eye on the Beamer, he wouldn't think twice about it. Like, he reckons we got a jump-start on him, right?'
'So now we're following him,' Karen said, 'following us?'
'This way we know where he's at. And until I can raise Terry on the blower, we still need to hit Athens.'
'I can't believe Madge told him about the cruise.'
Ray had nothing to add to that. They watched as the big guy got out of the Beamer and lumbered back across the forecourt, went to the Ladies' restroom. From the rear of the van came a rumbling sigh that sounded a lot like a sabre-toothed tiger contemplating a mammoth. Ray flinched, ducking his head into his shoulders, then shuddered. Without looking, Karen reached back over the seat and patted Anna's shaggy head. 'Not now, hon,' she murmured. 'Just give me five minutes, okay?' Then, her eyes still on the wing mirror, 'You were saying, about this island.'
Ray sipped some coffee. 'Ios, yeah. Time I was there, where I was staying, the guy had a hound he said was Rottweiler mixed with some Alsatian. To me it looked more like a bear crossed with a bigger bear, but I'm no expert. Anyway, the guy says the dog was for gypsies, blacks and guys in funny hats. Seriously, funny hats.' Karen gave Anna's ear a gentle tug, Anna growling sleepily way down in her throat. He said, 'You're living remote on the islands? They'll expect you to have a dog. Bigger the better.'
'So that's Anna looked after,' Karen said. 'What about me?'
'You'll buy a place,' he said, 'for thirty, forty. Nothing flash, you're not talking pools and wet bars, but enough space for Anna, a couple've acres. Then, you ride bikes, you can splash out for a Harley or some shit. Although in the islands, they mainly ride mopeds.'
'Mopeds?'
'Scooters. Anyway, your choice.'
'And I'm working as a waitress. In a cocktail bar, right?'
'Staying incognito,' Ray said, missing it. 'For a while, anyway. Until you decide what you want to do.' He glanced across. 'You've worked waitress before, right?'
'Never, no. But you're saying I look the type.'
'No offence,' Ray said. 'I thought all women, at some point, work waitress. Like, part-time. When they're kids, during the holidays.'
'On my résumé,' Karen said, 'if I had one, which I don't, but if I had? It'd say, "Taking care of bastard father".'
'Cooking, cleaning, serving him dinner. Same deal, right? And the living's cheap, especially on the islands. So you've still, even after buying the place, the bike, got thirty, forty gees in the mattress. That buys you, even not working, three or four years.'
'We have eighty right now,' Karen said, 'eighty and change once we split with Madge. Then, after we split, that's forty. Forty before I go buying any ranches.'
'So if we don't split,' Ray said, 'you've still got eighty.'
Karen watched the big guy give up knocking on the Ladies' door, do a quick sketch left and right, then barge through. She said, 'If we don't split or if we don't split the money?'
'Either or,' Ray said.
'Because what I'm thinking,' Karen said, 'is that kind of living -- I mean, remote on an island? Working in bars? It doesn't sound like your kind of living.'
'Hold on, here he comes.'
The big guy crossed the forecourt again, a suitcase under one armpit, the girl now in two-piece suit, jacket and slacks, a silk scarf knotted at her neck, tottering along on kitten heels, dragged by the hand. Ray lit a Marlboro and waited for the Beamer to pull off, the Beamer veering from the left-hand lane into the right when a Ford Focus came tearing towards it flashing its lights, honking its horn. 'Don't sweat the details, Karen,' he said. 'Living's living.'
They pulled out of the gas station and got on the road. Karen dug out her bottle of pills and leaned over the partition, fed one to Anna, shushed her to sleep. Then she filched one of Ray's Marlboros, cranked the window an inch or two.
'So what happens,' she said, 'we get to Athens, you still haven't heard from Terry?'
Ray scratched the plaster-cast below his elbow. 'I guess we make a new plan.'
'Another one?'
'Plans are cheap,' Ray said. 'Plans come free.'
Doyle
'The Acrockolis?' Sparks said. 'That anywhere near the Acropolis?'
'Right next door,' Doyle said. She switched the phone to her other ear, perched a buttock on a smooth rock that might have been a rock or yet another ancient altar, Christ, Doyle afraid to step on dog turds in case they turned out sacred. 'Just there behind the Acrapolis.'
'Ingrate. That's three thousand years worth of culture you're looking at there.'
Doyle, who'd found it hard to sleep in the muggy heat, felt like she fit right in with all the ruins. 'It's hot up here, Sparks. Plus they take your bag off you in case you smuggle out a temple or two, maybe. So I forgot to bring any water.'
'Details, girl. What's it like?'
Doyle shaded her eyes and looked up the dusty hill towards the Parthenon, the vast blue dome of sky behind. 'Right now,' she said, 'it's infested with Yanks and Japs, it's Iwo Jima with Nikons. And the temples are all covered over with scaffolding, so it looks a lot like a building site for the world's biggest sauna.' She pulled her clammy t-shirt away from her belly, the jeans sticking to her thighs. 'So what's happening there?'
Sparks cleared her throat. 'Frank's dead.'
'Shit. You're serious?'
'Last night,' Sparks said, 'late.'
'How come?'
'They're still not sure. So far they've ruled out septicemia, cancer and suicide. The early money's on heart-attack.'
'What happened?'
'They don't know. He was fine at the last check, around ten-ish, still bitching. Then, the nurse is doing her rounds, about two-ish, she finds the guy.'
'And no alarms went off? They were cut?'
'He wasn't critical, didn't even make it to ICU, he went straight from theatre to his private room. So he wasn't hooked up to any alarms.'
'What's Ted's take?'
'Right now nothing, mainly because he has Frank's lawyer crawling up his fundament with a six-foot probe. I mean, the guy was already squawking about negligence, how you're the biggest fuck-up since ...' Sparks paused. 'Actually, he reckons you're the biggest fuck-up ever. But don't take it personal, he's just building a case.'
'What about Madge?' Doyle said. 'What's the read on her?'
'I can't see her claiming self-defence,' Sparks said, 'when the guy was unarmed and cuffed to a cop. So yeah, right now she's staring down the barrel of a sawn-off shitgun. I'm guessing she'll claim temporary insanity after she found out Frank'd had her snatched, she blacked out, went doolally. Who'd blame her?'
'I wouldn't,' Doyle said. She dragged a wrist across her forehead, felt the sweat dribble down her forearm. 'So where am I in all this?'
'Ted wants you back. Yesterday.'
'What'll that achieve?'
'My guess is he's planning to drape you across his desk like Linda Carter, have you deflect that big fat bullet heading his way with your funky bracelets.'
'Fuck that. He doesn't know where I am, right?'
'Nope. But the boys finally got around to checking Madge's credit card records. So he knows about the cruise.'
'They know about Aspen?'
'That was the twins, her kids. Aspen's a non-runner.'
Doyle felt that tightening in her gut, she got it once in a while, not often but sometimes it played out -- the instinct, the hunch, starting to pay off. 'So there's a pretty good chance she's already here.'
'Except,' Sparks said, 'there's no record of her leaving the country. No Karen or Ray, either.'
'Karen won't be sticking around, Sparks. Not after Anna savaged Rossi. And if they were smuggling a Siberian wolf out ...'
'They could be anywhere, Doyle. You're hoping they're in Athens, or heading there, just because you're there.' She said, 'You want my advice? Come home. No way is Madge letting the kids go through the funeral, all that shit, on their own. Then, worst case scenario, you're in court with all your competence and shit, the model cop, you're keeping your head down. Meanwhile the jury's looking at Mad Madge McMad, the socialite who popped a cap in her husband's ass.'
Doyle watched a tiny lizard crawl up the side of the stone, its bluey-green iridescence reflecting back the sun in a million glinting sparks. 'So Karen and Ray, they just skate out free?'
'What do you care? Right now you need to think about you.'
'See, that's just it. I come home now, the best that happens is I get a pat on the head for not screwing it all the way up. And that's presuming they don't follow through on Ray and me, start asking what the deal was there. Maybe start wondering where the money's gone.'
'Y'think it'll look any better if you don't come back?'
Doyle thought about that. She said, 'How's this? We can't know for sure they're not taking that cruise until Madge shows up back at the ranch. She does, okay, I come home. That buys me a couple of days to maybe nail Ray.'
'Ray?'
'He's the one, he told me himself, pulled the snatch together. I get him, the money, I don't have to worry about keeping my head down, in court or anywhere else.'
'Okay,' Sparks said. 'But are we talking about nailing Ray or, y'know, nailing him?'
'If we find Anna --'
'Big if, Doyle.'
'Okay, but a Siberian wolf, she's noticeable, y'know? And if we find her, we have Karen, and wherever Karen is, there's Ray. A guy like that, she's not letting him walk away now. I mean, he took a bullet for her. You ever known a guy you could've said he'd take a bullet for you?'
'I've known a few,' Sparks said, 'I wouldn't mind volunteering for the role.'
Melody
'FARCO?' Johnny Priest said.
'The Francis Assisi Rehabilitation Concern Organisation,' Rossi said. 'For short? FARCO.'
'And you're saying, it's like AA for ex-cons.'
'Perxactly. Only the booze AA, not the motors one.'
'Putting cons back on their feet,' Johnny said. 'Giving them a helping hand.'
'It's a charity,' Rossi said. 'So we'll be getting tax-breaks, grants, free ads on TV, all this.' Rossi held up his balloon glass, twirling it slowly so the tawny liquid caught the light. 'This Napoleon brandy,' he said. 'Y'think they call it that 'cos it gets you thinking all strategic and shit?'
'But it's nothing to do,' Johnny said, 'with the Colombians.'
'The FARC fuckers? Christ no. Like I say, it's a charity. Only everyone gets to what they call pool their resources. Networking, all this.'
Johnny Priest showed good teeth in a quick grin, seeing it now. 'A co-op for ex-cons? Christ, it'll be unions next.'
Mel making mental notes every three seconds, the front of her brain a yellow wall plastered with Post-Its.
Rossi laid an arm along the back of the booth and took a sip on a joint that was no bigger, Melody judged, than a bicycle pump. 'You want in, Johnny, I'm talking ground floor, just say the word. We could get what they call an international dimension going.'
'Appreciate the offer, Rossi.' Johnny, Mel was disappointed to admit, wasn't exactly her idea of a gangster. Softly spoken, clean shaven, some old acne scars making him craggy but with neat strawberry-blonde hair. Sitting back now in the circular booth to consider Rossi's proposal with an ankle propped on his knee, wearing faded denims and penny loafers, no socks, a pale blue shirt open at the neck showing a tuft of blonde. 'And I'm grateful, don't get me wrong, you took the time to look me up. But things've changed since we celled, man. This,' he gestured around at the low-ceilinged club, Vatican Too, empty now at mid-afternoon, smelling faintly of stale beer and ammonia, 'this is where I'm at now. It's small, yeah, but it's mine and I'm not looking over my shoulder every three seconds. Y'know? So no disrespect, but the last thing I need is hooking up with ex-cons, charity or otherwise.'
'I hear you,' Rossi said. 'No harm done, right? I'm just letting you know it's there.'
'Much obliged.' He leaned in past the gently snoring Sleeps to accept the joint from Rossi. 'Good shit, right?'
'Not bad, yeah. What's this one called?'
'THX-1138.'
'Okay. What was the first one again?'
'Purple Craze.'
'Bit trippy, that. Not so sure I'm up for flying monkeys this early, y'know?'
'It's what they call,' Johnny said, sipping on the joint, 'value for money. You're chilled, you're tripping, you're covering all the bases. Mel? Want to try this one?'
'No thanks, Johnny.' Mel was half-stoned already, just sitting there, Johnny on a sub-committee assessing the long-list for something called the Cannabis Cup. She batted an eyelash again, hoping he'd catch this one. 'I'm afraid smoking doesn't agree with me.'
'No pressure,' Johnny said. 'It's there if you want it. Don't feel you need to ask.'
'I won't.'
Johnny nudged Sleeps' knee, offering the joint when Sleeps half-opened one eye. Sleeps just shook his head, closed the eye again. Johnny shrugged, handed the joint to Rossi. 'So you're driving all the way to Sicily,' he said, jerking a thumb at Sleeps, 'with the human dynamo here at the wheel. This is why you need the crizz.'
'Can you do it?'
'I can make a call, sure. No guarantees, mind, I'm not really moving in those circles anymore. So I wouldn't be able to vouch for the quality either.'
'Even your basic Billy'll do it. I mean, it's that or we find him a barbed-wire cushion.'
'I'll see what I can do,' Johnny said. 'So what's happening in Sicily?'
'I probably shouldn't say, man. You being clean and all, the less you know the better.' Rossi winked, tapped the side of his nose. 'Loose tips sink fish, dig?'
'Sure thing,' Johnny said, scratching his jaw. 'Okay, I'll make some calls, see if I can raise anyone.' He stood up, gestured at the low table. 'Make free with the samples, let me know what you think.'
'Will do,' Rossi said. Johnny moved off, went through a door behind the bar. Rossi grinned at Mel. 'Nice guy, huh?'
'Seems to be,' Melody said. 'Listen, Rossi -- you think you should be smoking so much? I mean, with all we have to do?'
'Mother's milk,' Rossi said. 'Anyway, what's with this 'we' shit?'
Melody counted to ten. 'We've been through this,' she said. 'I'm the one staking you, so I get equal say.'
'How about,' Rossi said, 'and I'm just having my equal say here, you was to be dragged down an alleyway, slapped around a little?'
'I'm out of shape,' Sleeps mumbled, his eyes still closed, 'but I'm a big man. You don't want me sitting on your head too long.'
'Much as I hate to admit it,' Mel said to Rossi, 'I'm about twenty pounds heavier than you are. And what, four inches taller?'
'Maybe three,' Rossi said.
'I also have two brothers, just in case you're wondering if I've any actual experience in putting guys flat on their ass when they start acting out. Anything else you need to know?'
Rossi had a toke thinking it over. 'So it's okay for you to go slapping someone around, but not me.' He turned his head to exhale, keeping his eyes on Melody's. 'How's that work?'
'Self-defence doesn't count.'
Johnny came through the door behind the bar and crossed to the booth, eased in past Melody. 'You're in luck,' he said, rubbing his hands.
'Yeah?' Rossi said. 'Crizz?'
'Yep.'
'The good shit?'
'You tell me. The guy's bringing it over, he'll be here in a couple've hours. You don't fly, you don't buy.'
'Sweet. Hey, Sleeps? Guy's coming here with the crizz.'
'Gorgeous,' Sleeps said.
'Fuck's the matter now?'
Sleeps opened one eye. 'Narcolepsy's a condition, Rossi. It's not like I get tired, y'know, take a powernap. The shit's hard-wired. Except you want to pump crizz in, jolly it all up, see how it goes.'
'How else do we get to Palermo on time? You won't fucking fly, now you're bitching about driving ...'
'So why don't you drive?'
'Because,' Rossi said, making an effort to restrain himself, Melody could tell, in Johnny's presence, 'you're the one took me to a vet after the wolf ripped half my head off, which is why I'm taking horse tranks. So I'm driving goofed to the eyeballs or blind with agony. That what you want?'
'Why don't I drive?' Melody said.
Rossi's eyebrows shot up. Johnny coughed. 'Rossi? Sorry to interrupt, man. But there's just one thing.'
'It's the dame who's paying, Johnny. Like she keeps saying, she's the one staking us.'
'It's just, this guy? Maybe I shouldn't have said, but I told him where you were headed.'
'Shit, Johnny. What'd we say about sinking fish?'
'I know.' Johnny held up a hand. 'Anyway, I told him about FARCO too.'
'Oh yeah?'
'He's got a proposal.'
Madge
'You got a good brief?' Terry said.
'He's okay, I guess. I mean, for handling a divorce. But for something like this?'
'See, what you're doing right there is thinking guilty. And until someone proves different, this is nothing like anything.'
Madge stirred her martini, chasing the olive around while she watched the tourists stroll arm-in-arm in the warm early evening, smiling, murmuring sweet nothings. Somehow she'd always imagined the conversation over a digestif on the terrace of a trattoria on a side street off the Piazza di Spagna being a little more romantic.
'I shot him, Terry.'
'No one's disputing that. Except between then and him actually croaking he was in the hands of the cops, the doctors, for what, twelve hours?'
'Closer to fourteen.'
'He wasn't even in ICU, Madge. If he had been, they wouldn't have been able to get to him.'
'Get to him?'
Terry paused while the waiter slipped sideways between their table and the low railing, the guy young and slim, whip-crack taut. Madge feeling old beyond years, a heaviness inside like her bones were fossilizing.
'We're agreed,' Terry said, keeping his voice low, 'Frank probably didn't die of natural causes. And okay, you blowing his shin out couldn't have helped his cause. But no one's dying from a capping, not unless it's deliberate.'
'I knew exactly what I was doing, Terry.'
'I'm talking about after. Like if he was just left there, no one puts in a call. Then, okay, you're talking shock, blood loss, hypothermia ... Anyway,' he said, clocking the expression on Madge's face, 'Frank was cuffed to this cop when it happened, right? And she'd know your basic emergency procedures, what Frank needed. The fact that the guy didn't even make it to ICU, was in his own room when it happened, means he was doing okay. He'd probably never have walked right again, sure, but he was off the critical list.'
'You're saying someone killed him?'
'Maybe, maybe not. But that's not your problem. All you're concerned about right now is the post-mortem putting blue sky between you shooting out his shin and him dying. That's all you need, reasonable doubt. Worst case scenario, it comes down to it, you need an actual alibi for where you were at the time ...' Terry reached across the table and took her hand, patted the back of it. 'I know of a guy, Madge, a brief, he's had some experience in cases like this. He'd stroll this one, eyes closed. You might have to bark once in a while, roll your eyes, froth up at the mouth when Frank's name gets mentioned. But this guy'll seal the deal.'
'If you're so sure, why aren't we headed for the airport?'
Terry, with a final pat, released her hand. 'Flying back,' he said, 'like the dutiful wife, the good mother.'
'Actually,' Madge said, unwilling to add hypocrisy to her claim to infamy, 'it'd be more like I have nothing to fear, so I'm not running away.'
'That's one way to look at it,' Terry said. 'You're calm, you're rational. You're innocent, right?'
'According to your brief I am.'
'Except it'll look better in court if you panic a little first.'
'Panic?'
'There's a chance they might be charged with murder, they've already put a bullet in the corpse? Most people, by which I mean a jury of your peers, they'd be inclined to shit themselves a cartload.'
Madge prodded gloomily at the olive. 'It'll look bad if I don't go back, Terry. If only for the twins' sake.'
'See, this is how panicked you were. Except it's not your fault, it's evolution.'
Madge raised an eyebrow. 'Evolution?'
'What they call fight or flight. Yeah? And you can't fight it, all those cops, so your instinct is to shoot through. But only for a few days. Then, you get a chance to think it over, okay, it's the twins that bring you back.' Terry warming to his theme. 'Even though there's a chance you might be wrongfully convicted, you're taking that chance so they don't have to go through all the bullshit on their own. That's even supposing it goes to court.' He cocked his head. 'Hey, did you even know the gun was loaded? I mean, obviously it was, we know that now. But when this guy Rossi handed you the Glock, did you know for sure it was loaded?'
'Well, I ...'
'How could you? You didn't see him load it, did you?'
Madge shook her head. 'I don't even know where it came from. One minute I was looking at Frank, the next --'
'Woah. Don't even go there, Madge. The trauma? You've blocked it all out.'
Madge was a little overwhelmed by Terry's being so au fait with the amount of wriggle room in what seemed to her a cast-iron case. 'Terry? I don't mean to sound ungrateful, you being so supportive and all, but there's one thing I need to ask.'
'Fire away.'
'Well,' Madge said, 'and don't think I'm complaining, but how come you're being so supportive and all?'
Terry gave a quick grin, clinked his glass on Madge's. 'What am I going to do, leave a damsel in distress?'
'It's a bit more than that, Terry. You're offering your brief, an alibi ... I mean, people'll ask about you, won't they? What you're getting out of it.'
'They'll take one look at you and know exactly what I'm getting out of it.'
'That's sweet, Terry, but seriously -- aren't you taking on a lot here that you don't need to?'
Terry picked up his silver cigarette case, offered it to Madge, then took one himself when she declined. He lit up, waving his hand through the smoke so it wouldn't drift over to Madge's side of the table. 'I'm clean, Madge. The thing with Frank? Unless you want me to say different, I hadn't even met you before you blew a hole in him. Fact is, or far as anyone can prove, the first I ever hear of Frank is that he's dead, you're telling me today. Which puts me in place to give you an alibi, you were with me last night, I'm a lucky dog.'
'But won't they investigate you? Dig around, see if we had any motive for wanting Frank dead?'
'Let 'em. There's no one can put us together before Frank checked out, it's not like we were having an affair, sneaking around behind Frank's back, especially seeing as how you were separated, Frank already with a new tart on board. And then, you're saying Frank was broke, the guy remortgaging and shit -- I mean, that's why he was having you snatched, right? He was brassic.' Madge nodded. 'Okay,' he said, 'so what motive could I have? Anyone wants to look at my accounts, I'm in pretty good shape. And you were already getting divorced. So what do I gain from nailing Frank?'
'Nothing, I guess.'
Terry signaled the waiter, spiraled his forefinger for two more martinis. 'So there it is. We hop a flight tomorrow, get into Athens nice and early, maybe see a few --'
'Athens?' Madge stared. 'You're still taking the cruise?'
'Naturally. This is how panicked you are, how screwed your thinking is. So we arrive at the port, they pick us up there, maybe. Or, they haven't twigged yet you're taking the cruise, we give it a few days, see some sights. Then you make a call, say you're coming home.'
'It's that easy.'
'Hey, you've already paid for the cruise, right? Might as well get some value for it ... Only thing is,' he said, sitting back to allow the waiter place the martinis on the table, nodding his thanks, 'we'll need to let Ray know the score. Best they don't get involved, complicate things. You have a number for Karen, right?'
Madge, thinking dolefully on how Frank, even dead, was making her life a misery, just nodded. Terry sat forward. 'Madge? Don't worry about it.' He raised his glass, toasting her. 'Here's to panicking,' he said, 'in the lap of luxury.'
'To panicking,' Madge said, forcing a smile. But when Terry went to the bathroom the dread crept back in, this prickly sensation calcifying the walls of her gut.
Madge, her whole life had been shaped by Frank ever since the bastard date-raped her that night in his father's car, got her pregnant, Madge sixteen years old. Now she stared across the street at the haughty mannequins in the shop window opposite, trying remember a single kindness, a gentle touch or generosity that didn't eventually reveal itself as a means to an end, the end being, inevitably, Frank's gratification.
Sure, she was glad he was dead. But he had ruined her life like sea on rock, wearing her down by imperceptible degrees.
Why should it be any different this time?
Rossi
The guy finally arrived, Johnny making the introductions. The guy, Jochem, breaking out the crizz straight away. Exactly three minutes later Sleeps was primed to hijack a submarine, take it all the way to Sydney.
'So Johnny,' Jochem said, 'he tells me about the FARCO.'
Rossi, feeling his eyes the size of golf balls, nodded tersely. 'Johnny says you got a proposal.'
'Is the cruise,' Jochem said. The guy with less presence than Rossi'd expected. Thin and wiry, a scruffy black toothbrush moustache, dark and wary eyes. 'Where will it going?'
Rossi glanced across at Mel. 'Oh,' she said airily, 'y'know, the usual. Egypt. The Holy Land. All around.'
'The Greek islands?' Johnny said.
'Sure,' Mel said. 'Some of them, sure.'
'What about Ios?' Johnny said.
'Definitely.'
'And when does it get in there?'
'Without the itinerary,' Melody said, 'I couldn't say for sure, it's back in the car. I mean, I could --'
'What's the frammis?' Rossi cut in.
'Well,' Johnny said, 'it's like ...' He raised an eyebrow. 'Frammis?'
'Frammis, yeah.'
'Gig,' Sleeps said. 'Job.'
'Oh.' Johnny shrugged. 'Anyway, the deal is the Greeks are death on your recreational chemicals. You've seen Midnight Express, right?'
'That was set in Turkey,' Sleeps pointed out.
Rossi snorted. 'Greeks, Turks, South Sea fuckin Samolians. What's the grift?'
'Jochem here,' Johnny said, 'reckons there's a famine out in the Greek islands. A lot of party people coming up short on their holiday quota of snow.'
'I'm guessing,' Mel said, 'we're not talking about skiing.'
'Gak,' Johnny said. 'Although,' he looked to Jochem for reassurance, 'nothing too heavy. Just a couple've of keys, already stamped. All you have to do is hand it over to a man who'll be waiting when the ship docks.'
'On this Ios,' Rossi said.
'What's in it for us?' said Mel.
Johnny said something to Jochem in Dutch. Jochem shrugged, said something that sounded to Rossi like he was gargling marbles. 'Ten gees,' Johnny translated. 'Throwing the crizz in on top.'
'Sounds fair,' Rossi said.
'Isn't that a bit generous,' Sleeps said, 'for two keys?'
'Jochem needs a man,' Johnny Priest said, 'can be trusted to do the hard thing the simple way.'
Rossi nodding along. 'We can do simple,' he said. 'So where's this gak?'
Ray
Ten hours out of Amsterdam and they were still only passing Munich. Ray's eyes raw, burning. Even wearing shades, the headlights of the oncoming traffic were lasers.
'So where's next?' Karen said.
'Milan,' he said through clenched teeth. Wondering if it was just exhaustion or if lockjaw was in the post, tetanus. 'Through the Alps, down into Milan. That's another six hundred clicks. Then, Milan to Rome, eight hundred. About the same to Bari, maybe a little more. How're we doing on the happy tabs?'
Karen rummaged in her bag, passed one over. Ray dry-swallowed the pill, lit a cigarette. 'Any chance,' he said, 'of changing that CD?'
'You don't like Tom Waits?'
'Sixteen times in a row? I wouldn't even want Natalie Portman sixteen times in a row.'
Karen flicked through Ray's CDs. 'How about these guys, The Jam?'
'Going Underground,' Ray said. 'Appropriate.'
Karen switched CDs. Ray, nodding along to That's Entertainment, said, 'I'm not going to make it.'
'No?'
'Not a chance. The arm's fucked, I'm numb to the shoulder. The not-good numb.'
'Shit. So what do we do?'
'Plan B.'
'There's a plan B?'
'Always.'
'Do we still get to see the Alps?'
'We'll be mostly skipping the Alps,' Ray admitted. 'At least, they won't be getting any bigger than they are now.'
'They're pretty big now,' Karen said, craning her neck to look up at the snow-capped peaks. She said, 'Hey, Ray? Know what I like best about you?' Ray wasn't so tired he didn't catch the needle in her tone. 'It's how you're spontaneous,' she said. 'Flexible. You're not the kind of guy, he makes a plan and that's it, has to stick to it after his feet catch fire.'
'Life's too short for sticking to plans.'
'How about keeping promises?'
'A plan,' he said, 'is a theory. A promise is people. It's like abstract and actual, and you can fuck with abstract. Actual's different.'
'So what promise did you actually make to Doyle? I mean, Stephanie.'
'None,' Ray said.
'You told her,' Karen persisted, 'you'd do time. That you'd stand up in court, be her fall guy. So she could put Frank away for all the kidnaps, Frank instead of Terry Swipes. With you doing, I think you said, a two-year jolt for aiding and abetting.'
'Telling's telling. I didn't make any actual promises.'
'You lied to her, Ray. This is what I'm saying about the spontaneity. You said one thing, did another.'
'You're saying I lied?'
'You did lie.'
'I'm pretty sure I said I'd do time if you got the money.'
'We got the money. All two hundred grand of it. Now, after deductions, one sixty-seven and going down like the dollar.'
'Only because we ran off with it,' Ray said. 'Doyle, you didn't see it? She had other plans. And if we'd stuck around, I'd have gone for a tumble and you wouldn't have seen any cash. Bang goes the cottage at the lake, the three acres for Anna to run around in.'
Karen staring out into gathering gloom. 'They have many lakes on the Greek islands, Ray?'
'Hey, you're the one said you had to flee the country. That's the word you used, right? Flee.' Karen, chewing her lip, nodded. 'Because,' he said, 'if we stuck around, Anna'd be put down for mauling Rossi. Correct me if I'm wrong.'
Karen, grudging it, nodded again.
'Okay,' Ray said. 'So I took that on board, made the suggestion -- a suggestion, mind -- that the Greek islands might suit Anna, the Greeks being pretty cool about homicidal hounds doing the whole Born Free bit. Even agreed, this with a busted fucking arm from shipping a bullet, to drive her there. Except now I'm flat out fucked, can't do it all the way down through Italy, all I'm talking about diverting a little out of the way, make it easier on everyone.'
'This being the latest plan. Another one.'
Ray with these weird quivers in the small of his back, the strain, the constant pressure. He knuckled his eyes. 'Just say it, Karen. Whatever it is you're brewing up in there, just --'
'You made plans with Doyle.'
'You're still worrying about Doyle.'
'You made her look ridiculous. This after she specifically told you, and I quote, not to leave her looking a total fucking blonde.'
'Christ.' Ray shook his head. 'I thought it was men had problems with pride.'
'There's pride,' Karen said, 'and there's looking ridiculous.'
Ray, bone weary, flipped his smoke into the breeze. 'What're you saying, she'll come after us?'
'You,' Karen said. 'I'm saying, she'll be coming after you.'
Doyle
Watching him now through the mist as he paced the street arguing on the phone, Doyle had to admit Niko'd changed. Still tall, sure, but filling out in all the right places, shoulders and chest, leaving him slim through the hips, rangy now even in the suit and open-necked shirt, the guy could easily have passed for Italian if it wasn't for the snake-skin calf-length cowboy boots.
She wondered if it was a woman on the other end of the line, Niko dropping her at short notice to hook up with Doyle, bring her to this cute little restaurant where they could sit out on the veranda with water streaming down off the awning overhead like a curtain against the dead heat, a cool mist blowing in against the patrons. Athens in mid-September, Christ, sultry like a Tennessee Williams fourth act. Doyle, she had a straw, was sure she could've sipped the air.
Niko ducked in through the curtain of mist and strode to their table, folded himself carefully into the chair. 'Sorry,' he said, 'but that was unavoidable.' He turned off the mobile phone and tucked it away into the breast pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of his chair. 'There,' he said with a wide, easy smile. 'No more interruptions.'
'Don't worry about it.'
His face had filled out too, the olive skin taut now over a fleshy fullness, the dominant nose giving him a patrician look. Plus, Doyle'd forgotten, he had eyes like warm liquorice. He picked up his fork. 'So where were we?' he said.
Something else Doyle had forgotten, was thrilling to now, was Niko's accent, rich and slightly guttural.
'The girl's about my age,' she lied, 'thirty-one, thirty-two. Has this weird twist to her chin like she busted her jaw one time. She'll be the one driving because the guy stopped a bullet.' She prodded her upper arm with her fork. 'He'll probably have it in a sling. Then, the wolf has only one eye, the other one being covered with an eye-patch.'
'Like a pirate.'
'A were-pirate. We'll be needing silver bullets.'
'So if we find them, identification shouldn't be a problem.'
'I shouldn't have thought so, no.'
'Of course, the finding, this is the difficult part.'
'You get many wolves in Athens? I mean, this late in the season.'
'September is a busy time here, Stephanie.' Doyle with an involuntary shiver at how Niko packed about six syllables into her name. 'September is when Italy closes down, everyone goes on holidays. They come over in droves. Piraeus gets crazy this time of the year.'
Doyle, having hit the glass ceiling a little earlier than she expected, had found herself with a lot of time on her hands career-wise. So she'd broadened her horizons, started taking courses to get her out of the office for a week at a time and put some points on her pension. Marksmanship, hostage negotiation, community policing for ethnic minorities -- Doyle had done the lot. Then Ted took her away for a long weekend to Barcelona, a junket on policing electronic frontiers, cops swapping tips on how not to look like total muppets while the bad guys ran the show. Doyle'd caught on fast, all those free lunches in Prague, Florence, Berlin, Madrid -- Doyle had seen them all at her leisure, all expenses paid.
She believed Prague had been her favourite. The worst had been Athens, dirty, dusty and noisy, the buildings imported wholesale from some Kiev industrial estate. Worse, Niko had taken a shine to her, Niko the official interpreter for the group, not long back from his secondment in London and keen to impress with his Oxford English. A greyhound chasing her all over town, tongue lolling from this inane grin Doyle'd wanted to put her fist through.
'All I'm asking,' she said, 'is you keep your ears open. Someone mentions a wolf with an eye-patch, you let me know.'
'Of course. Consider it done.' He sipped some wine, patted his lips with the napkin. 'But what happens then? Unless the woman, Marge --'
'Madge.'
'Madge, yes.' He gave one of his exquisitely careless shrugs. 'But unless she makes a statement to the effect that she is a hostage, then there is nothing we can do. Not until such time as an official request comes through the channels, at least, and we would have no reason to hold them long enough for that to happen. You know how long it can take.'
Doyle, who'd neglected to mention Frank's untimely demise, and believed the issue of her suspension was news to be doled out on a strictly need-to-know basis, said, 'Sure, yeah. But all I'm asking is you tip me off as to where they are.'
Niko nodded. 'Just so long as you remember,' he said, waggling his fork at her, 'you're out of your jurisdiction. The last thing we need right now is another scandal about Greek policemen ballsing up.'
Doyle'd seen the footage on YouTube, two Greek cops forcing some immigrant kids to beat themselves up in the station. 'Who said anything about arresting anyone?' she said. 'I'm on my holidays, Niko. Here to have some fun.'
Niko popped home some kalamari. 'Fun, huh?'
'Absolutely. Take a ferry or two, see some islands.'
He held up a warning forefinger. 'It's not safe in the islands for a beautiful woman on her own, Stephanie.'
'Safe's for back home, Niko. And I'm on my holidays.'
He shrugged, that gorgeously loose and careless Greek shrug, then toasted her with his wine glass. 'Here's looking,' he said.
FRIDAY
Sleeps
'When Hannibal crossed the Alps?' Sleeps said. He pointed through the windscreen in the general direction of where the snow-capped peaks had been before night came down. 'He lost sixteen elephants.'
'How does anyone,' Melody said, 'lose sixteen elephants?'
'One would've been unfortunate,' Sleeps said, flexing his hands on the steering-wheel, enjoying the pay-off. 'Sixteen? That's just careless.'
'Oscar Wilde,' she said. 'Right?'
Sleeps nodded, getting a shivery tingle that had nothing to do with the crizz. Over the hump now, the first blast like being plugged into a tiny sun, hair crackling, muscles taut and skin humming. He glanced across at Melody, fiddling now with the stereo trying to find a station that wasn't cranking out guttural death-metal. Okay, the girl was flat-out loon, Sleeps was hoping they didn't encounter any full moons on the high seas, but Sleeps had always liked the big-boned girls and Melody had curves like the Monaco Grand Prix.
In the end she switched the stereo off. A gentle snoring purred in from the rear, the combination of crizz, Woo-Woos, Purple Craze and horse tranks catching up with Rossi round about Stuttgart.
'Think we'll make it?' she said.
'It's do-able. I mean, thirteen hundred clicks in what, sixteen hours? I stay awake, that's do-able. And we've got that extra hour. They're an hour ahead in Palermo, right?'
'They would be,' Mel said, 'if we were still at home. But I think we've caught up with the time-zone now.'
'Shit. Really?'
'I'm not sure. We're still in Germany, right?'
'Long as we're heading in the general direction of up, we're still in Deutschland. Then, we get to where it's all heading down, we're into Italy. Freewheeling all the way to Sicily.'
'Yeah.' Mel nibbled a thumbnail. 'Listen, Gary? There's something you should know.'
'What's that?'
'We're not going to Sicily.'
'No?'
'The cruise, it's leaving from Athens.'
Sleeps digested that. 'So why'd you say Palermo?'
'I thought Rossi might try to dump me, swipe my credit card.'
'Smart thinking, yeah. Perceptive. Except why wouldn't he have dumped you when he heard it was Palermo?'
'It was a test. If he tried, I'd have told him it wasn't Palermo.'
'Makes sense, I guess.'
'You're not mad at me?'
He glanced across. 'I'm here to drive, Mel. All I have to do is point this baby until we get caught or we don't. Athens, Sicily, Outer Banglakazikstan, it's all jake with me.'
'What about Rossi? Y'know, with him being half-Sicilian and all ...'
Rossi being as Sicilian as melted igloos, Sleeps just shrugged. 'I won't tell him if you don't.'
'How d'you mean?'
'We get to Athens, there won't be these big signs, "This Is Athens". Right?'
'But they'll be speaking Greek.'
'To Rossi, Italian'd be all Greek.' Sleeps shrugged. 'If he twigs, we just tell him the truth.'
'And then what?'
'He'll vent a bit, sure. Probably mention Napoleon, how the little guy was never backstabbed by his troops, all this. Then he'll have a toke, a dab of crizz, remember something else he's pissed about.' Sleeps made a spiraling gesture with his forefinger. 'And the circle of life will turn again.'
Melody fell silent. Sleeps drove on into the darkness, wondering if driving on the wrong side of the road, the wrong side being actually the right side, was some kind of omen for where his life was headed. Then caught his first glimpse of the Alpine tunnels, brightly lit orange beacons in the blackness, their round mouths putting Sleeps in mind of sawn-off shotguns. So he got off the whole omens thing.
Mel, whispering now, said, 'You ever think about dumping him?'
'Nope.'
'Seriously?'
'Yep.'
'The thought never even occurred to you?'
'Why don't you just put it out there, Mel? Get it off your chest.'
'Well,' she said, 'it makes sense, doesn't it? The guy's a liability. I mean, you're the driver, I know where the cruise is going from. Why do we need him?'
'You just told me where the cruise is going from. So why do I need you?'
'Maybe I lied.'
'I was kind of presuming you did.'
'You don't trust me?'
'Don't take it personal. It's just best all round when no one trusts anyone, keeps everyone on their toes.'
'I thought,' she said, 'back on the ferry, you and me had a connection.'
'No disrespect, Mel, but you're a straight, a civilian.' Sleeps flicked his head in the general direction of the low drone buzzing from the rear. 'Who's now driving through Europe in a stolen car with two fuckwits and a stash of stamped gak in the trunk. That kind of desperate measure, it makes me wonder what kind of desperate times you got going on you're not telling anyone about.'
'I told you, I'm making this movie.'
'Sure. Butch Cassidy and the Zorba Kid.'
'You don't believe me?'
'I'd like to. Really, I'd love to think you were on the level.'
'If it's good enough for Rossi --'
'Rossi doesn't give a shit, Mel. You think he's a moron, he believes all this movie crap'll pan out?' He shook his head. 'Right now you could tell him, I dunno, you're the reincarnation of Maria Callas off to marry Onassis all over again, the guy'd play along, ask you to sing him The Wild Colonial Boy. Rossi wants Karen, the money, and you're putting him beside her. That's as far as it goes for Rossi.'
'But not for you.'
'I'm not so worried about the money. Being honest? It'll be a miracle if we ever catch up with Karen. So I'm along for the ride, just enjoying the buzz, the drive.' The crizz glowing deep down in his system. 'Know what'd spoil that? If I got the impression I was the one being taken for a ride.'
'By me.'
'Rossi, I know why he's here. And I'm the one driving him. That leaves you.'
Melody stared out into the darkness, her face blue-tinged from the glow of the dashboard lights. The glare of oncoming headlights splashing her yellowy once in a while. 'The script is shit,' she said, so quietly Sleeps barely heard her over the snoring, the hum of the Beamer.
'That's probably a good way to be thinking,' he said. 'You were to tell me it was great all the way through I'd be worried, wondering if you weren't a bit too close to it. Y'know?'
'It's not that,' he said. She turned to face him. 'I mean, have you ever seen a baby's first crap?'
'Can't say as I have.'
'It's like tar. Black sticky shit, the baby's covered in it.' Melody scratching absent-mindedly at her forearm. 'You need about two tons of steel wool to get this stuff off.'
'And this is your script.'
'See,' she said, 'you're writing porn scripts, there's not much call for character development. It's like, do we go wham-bam, thank you ma'am, or just wham-ma'am?'
'I always like a bit of bam,' Sleeps said.
'Right now I got Jack and Judy,' Mel said, 'they're heading for Greece. Yeah?'
'Go on.'
'Well, that's just it. They're heading for Greece. Like in a straight line, A to B.'
'No bam.'
'So I'm wondering, what if Jack was thinking about dumping Judy. Or vice versa.'
'Judy, she maybe likes her vice versa?'
'But I still need 'em to make it to Greece. I mean, they don't get there together, there's no movie.'
'Or Jack could get there first, Judy chasing him. Viceing this versa she's got going on.'
'What I'm looking for,' Mel said, 'is conflict. Like, Judy thinks she's being dumped? How's she going to react?'
'Jesus, Mel, the suspense is killing me. Cut to the chase.'
'You don't get it?'
'Get what?'
'This is why I'm asking you to dump Rossi. See what you say, how you react.'
'Oh.'
'Only now it's too late. Now you'll be thinking, how's this going to look in a movie? Trying to be cool, come up with a snappy line, instead of just saying it.'
Sleeps thought that over. 'Except,' he said, 'when you asked me, I mean to dump Rossi? I said no straight off the bat.'
'I heard you. But you didn't get crazy, or start making plans or, y'know ...'
'No bam,' Sleeps said.
'Well, yeah.'
'And you want to know what a real bad guy'd say, he got that kind of proposal.'
'I don't know any criminal types, Gary. You're the best I've got.'
Sleeps nodding along. 'All I can tell you is what I'd say, Mel. And right now Rossi owes me five gees, this is from way back, whether or not he finds Karen. Plus, this FARCO thing ever takes off, he's promised me president for life. Being honest,' he shrugged, 'I've a pretty good idea I'll be seeing no five gees, no president for life. Only right now I'm cruising Europe in a Beamer with a decent chance of going down for soft time.'
'See,' Mel said, frustrated, 'that right there is screwing with my narrative arc. Like, who wants to watch a movie about a bad guy who wants to get caught?'
'You're saying, where's the bam?'
'Well ...'
Sleeps licked the tip of his forefinger and dabbed it into the foil wrap on the dashboard, snorted a pinch up each nostril, rubbed the remainder into his gums. 'How about this?' he said. 'How about, you wait 'til I'm having a snooze, you mention to Rossi about dumping me? Maybe tell him I was the one suggested dumping him.'
Mel considered. 'You're not worried he'd freak?'
'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.' Which would be, Sleeps was guessing, roughly three seconds after the bridge flew out of his ass, a Mack truck dangling from its railing. 'But I warn you now, you do it and you'll have all the bam you can handle. You'll be up to your tits, pardon my French, in bam.'
'Y'think?'
'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-whop-boom-bam,' Sleeps said.
Ray
'So that's Trieste we didn't get to see,' Karen said. 'And now you're saying we won't see Corfu either.'
Up on deck smoking, leaning on the rail, Ray guessed the occasional glow here and there was Albania, its huge dark bulk rearing up into the Balkans, stars glittering if he craned his neck all the way back.
'Right now,' he said, 'the priority is to make the cruise. Then, we know for sure no one's getting screwed, specifically Terry, we can go anywhere we want. Maybe even come back and see Corfu.'
Karen took a drag on her smoke. 'You still think they won't make it?'
'Depends on if Madge mentions booking it by credit card. If she does, Terry's not taking that chance. But there's no guarantees she'll mention it. I mean, when's it likely to come up in conversation?'
'It might.'
'If it does, great. Everyone's a winner.'
'You don't think it will.'
'I don't know, Karen. How would I know?'
'Okay, relax. I'm only asking.'
'About fifty times an hour.'
'You're the one said we shouldn't presume anything.'
'Yeah, well, she will or she won't. Either way, we're seeing that ferry off.'
'And then making our getaway.'
'That's the basic idea.'
'Except you already said, there's no getaway as such. We're getting away. All the time worried about Doyle sharking you.'
'You're the one's worried about Doyle.'
'Right now,' Karen said, 'I'm actually more worried that you're not.'
'Doyle didn't strike me as the kind to hold a grudge. I mean, she was fucked off, okay. But she's a cop. She'll be practical.'
'This is how well you know her. You can predict how she's going to react, and for how long.'
'Doyle's the same as anyone else. She has her limits.'
'And you know what they are.'
'I can make an educated guess.'
'I'm all ears.'
'I'm thinking the Caribbean might be a jump too far for her.'
'The Caribbean?'
Ray jerked at thumb in the general direction of Albania. 'I served in there,' he said. 'Way the hell back and gone in there. When I was with the Rangers, a peace-keeping mission in Kosovo. Six-month tour. Anyway,' he said, 'this guy I served with, he's out now, running an op in the Caribbean based out of Haiti. Has the security franchise for a mobile phone company, they're expanding into the Caribbean, Central America. Said he could always use a guy could handle himself.'
'You're thinking,' Karen said, 'about going to the Caribbean.'
'I'm saying it's an option. One that's probably beyond Doyle's limits, even if she ever found out where I was.'
'And where's that leave me?'
'The issue,' Ray said, 'far as I understand it, is me and Doyle. You being worried about how I'm not worried about her.'
'While you're still with me and Anna, sure.'
'This is what I'm getting at,' Ray said. 'If I'm gone you don't have to worry about Doyle no more. Or about me not worrying about Doyle.' He sparked another Lucky, no Marlboro Lights on the ferry. 'Or am I missing something here?'
'Like what?'
'Like I don't know. Maybe something about Doyle and me, you haven't gotten around to saying it yet.'
'I just said it.'
'Not this horseshit,' Ray said, 'some outside shot about Doyle maybe prowling me.'
Karen, eyes hidden away behind mirrored shades at four in the morning, the electric-blue hair glowing weirdly in the moonlight, said, 'You ever listen to jazz, Ray?'
'Not by choice.'
'What they say about jazz is, if it has to be explained you'll never get it.'
Ray sucked on the Lucky. 'So now it's jazz. It's jazz, it's Doyle, it's Madge. It's Anna.' He exhaled hard. 'You see it?'
'See what?'
'It's never you, Karen.'
'It's never me how?'
Ray flipped the Lucky, two in a row too harsh after the Marlboro Lights. He said, tasting the tar, 'We get into Patra? There's a train overland to Athens.'
'You told me this already.'
'The train'll get you into Piraeus, the port, or damn near.'
'We've been over --'
'Then, the ferries take you out to the islands.'
Karen folded her arms. 'Your point being?'
'To get this far, to Greece, you needed a driver. Except now you don't need a driver.'
'You're bailing?'
'Now I've got you here, I'm a liability.'
'I'm asking,' Karen said, 'if you're bailing out.'
'Let's say it's more in the way of letting myself be pushed.'
'Don't try and fake me, Ray. I don't fake.'
'It's another six, seven hours,' Ray said, 'to Patra. Gives you plenty of time to think it over. Then, you want to find me, I'll be easy found.'
Karen getting the twist in her jaw again. 'You want to be found,' she said, 'you better be lying out somewhere so's I trip over your legs.'
Ray dug in his pocket, came up with the van's keys and laid them on top of the ferry's rail. 'Your call,' he said.
Madge
Madge, suffering night-sweats and hot flushes, pacing the room with dawn in the post, couldn't decide if she was finally coming menopausal or just suffering guilty killer syndrome. Although guilty, she was adamant, only in the technical sense. Like, legally. Once the shock began to ebb away, the dullness sharpening again into a stark appraisal of what she'd done -- blew a hole in Frank, she'd overheard Ray telling Terry, you could've bowled a strike through -- Madge was delighted to realise she was getting bolshy again, unrepentant.
The way she saw it, slipping out onto the balcony overlooking the quiet piazza, smoking one of Terry's cigarettes, it all came down to consequences. Madge, sure, had often fantasised about what it would've been like to have Frank at the business end of a gun. Or, maybe, tucked into an iron maiden. Except the likelihood of that ever coming to be had always been size zero slim, a thing you read about in magazines but only ever happened to the lucky few, the insanely dedicated. Then Frank starts the ball rolling, arranges his wife of twenty years to be snatched, puts her in a place where a guy's handing her a gun, Frank helpless in handcuffs ...
Like, what else was a reasonable woman to do?
No, the way Madge was seeing it, if anyone was guilty for Frank being dead, it was Frank. No, not guilty -- responsible. Madge tapped ash off the balcony, wondering what the difference was, legally speaking, between guilty and responsible. Not really caring, though. Everything feeling a bit conceptual right now, theoretical. It was like, she thought, being caught in a bubble looking out at the world carrying on as normal, Madge watching it turn, interested but not particularly engaged, like drinking a coffee on some terrace, curious as to what people were wearing, why they were wearing it, how in Christ's name they thought they could get away with knee-high boots and three-quarter-length jeans with fat turn-ups over calf-muscles they'd swiped off a baby hippo. The Italians, Christ, all fashion, no style ...
Madge feeling immune, dislocated. But in a good way. Knowing the long arm of the law could come reaching out across the horizon any minute, knock on the bubble's door, crook a finger -- except, if it did?
Then it did. Deal with it then.
Madge'd lived most of her life worried. Always thinking ahead, making plans, contingencies for what might go wrong. Knowing, married to Frank, that it was only ever a matter of time before something else cropped up. Finally he got himself barred for malpractice, sued for negligence. One woman, Madge had seen the pictures Frank'd left out on the desk in his study, Frank curled up on the couch cuddling a quart of Glenfiddich, the woman looking a lot like the ice after the Stanley Cup went into overtime ...
Then, the twins. Jeanie and Liz, watching The Simple Life, Paris and Nicole, like it was Open University. Madge had done her best by them, at least in the early years, before the twins got sucked into the race to become the skinniest twit on YouTube and Madge turned to nurturing her preferred deadly duo, the old Prozac-and-vodka one-two.
But really, what did she owe them?
Wrong question, Madge told herself, flipping the cigarette out into the piazza, slipping back into the room, luxuriating in the sensation of the heavy velvet curtains sliding across her arms and shoulders. Round about now was when the twins, old enough to jaunt around the world, needed to realise how much they owed the woman who'd been ripped open giving birth. Madge hoping they'd do the math and come up owing her nothing. No demands, no more whinging, an absolute moratorium on constant, low-level grief about clothes, hair, boys, money. Mainly money.
Madge, okay, was the one responsible -- no, guilty -- for bringing them into the world. So sure, she'd done the crime. But she'd done her time too. And the least she was entitled to, the very least, was to walk away free and clear, debt to society paid.
Terry, she thought, looking down at him now where he lay humped over in the bed, wanted to take a cruise, live the high life, then take her home, he said, to face the music. Madge imagining a whole orchestra lined up in a row, a firing squad.
She shrugged. Maybe because Frank had been such a nut for Rossini, was always playing opera like it made him some kind of half-assed intellectual, Madge had never been a big fan of orchestras, all that classical horseshit. Terry, on the other --
The thought arrowed into her mind so fast, so clear, that Madge gasped. And then its enormity struck her, the thunder arriving in the lightning's wake. Afterwards, huddled on the toilet, still shivering, she wondered if the reason hadn't seen it was because it was so big, so obvious ...
How Terry'd had it arranged. Frank, the fool, bringing the heat down on everyone, Karen and Ray first, but Terry too, Terry the guy behind Madge getting snatched, the one who'd brought it all to Ray.
She wondered too if Terry'd had Frank killed because he was a loose end or just to make an example of him, this is what happens when you fuck with Terry Swipes.
Not that it mattered now. What mattered now was, Terry wasn't Madge's alibi.
Madge was Terry's.
Melody
'What is he?' Mel said. 'A cop?'
'Dunno,' Sleeps said.
'A soldier?'
'Could be.'
'That's some weird marching he's got going on there.'
'I'm guessing he's drunk.'
'Oh.' Mel leaned forward to peer into the wing mirror. 'Think he fell asleep?'
'If he did, he's sleepwalking this way.'
'Rossi, I mean.'
'Sssh. Let me do the talking, okay?'
The cop, or maybe soldier, the guy wearing dusty fatigues, weaved across the tarmac towards them, one hand upraised as if telling them to stop. Except they'd been stopped twenty minutes now, Rossi coming awake fast with a look of fright on his face, bawling at Sleeps to pull over, he was touching cloth, the turtle showing its head.
So Sleeps pulled in onto the apron of a little supermarket, the place still closed this early, the sky lightening to a dull maroon over the crest of the hills rising sheer on their left. It was, Mel had decided, the most idyllic setting she'd ever seen for a supermarket, tucked neatly into the crook'd elbow of a bay that opened up on the other side of the road, rowboats moored and bobbing gently on the metallic glimmerings of the Adriatic half-glimpsed between the pines. Even the sight of Rossi shambling across the tarmac into the scrub beyond the tarmac apron, one hand jammed between his buttocks, hadn't spoiled the view entirely.
And then this guy had come stumbling down off the hill, out of the darkness into the orange glow of the supermarket's apron.
Sleeps wound down the window, leaned out. 'How's it going?' he said.
The cop, or soldier, held up his hand again, peering now at the registration plate, the tax and insurance discs. Late twenties, maybe, but grizzled with it, stubble running to grey. A hard strong jaw, eyes dark under the peak of the forage cap. Mel, noting the leather strap running diagonally across his chest that suggested he was carrying some kind of machinegun, felt a frisson tingle up the back of her thighs.
He came around to Sleeps' side and grunted something.
'Sorry,' Sleeps said. 'We're tourists. Don't suppose you speak English?'
The cop, or soldier, growled something, then hawked a gunger that gurgled in his throat before he spat it out. He held out his hand and made the universal gimme sign.
'Passports?' Sleeps said.
The guy shook his head.
'Driver's licence?' Sleeps hazarded.
The cop, the soldier, taking it personal now. He straightened up, lurched backwards half a step, then tugged on the leather strap so the machinegun slid around into view, leaving it high on his hip. He jabbed a finger in the general direction of north, muttered something guttural.
'That's right,' Sleeps said. 'We've just come from Split. Heading down into Dubrovnik now. Looking forward to seeing that old city, man. Hey, don't suppose you were around when the Serbs were --'
The cop, the soldier, punched the door with the side of his fist. Wriggled his shoulders and jabbed his finger north again, then made a lifting gesture.
'You want to look in the trunk?' Sleeps said. 'Sure thing, no worries.' He made to open the door, get out. The cop, the soldier, slammed it closed again, then pointed down towards Sleeps' feet, made a jerking motion this time. Sleeps held up both his hands, palms out. 'Okay, man. Relax.' He reached down, tugged on the trunk-release. 'There,' he said. 'It's open.'
With one last growl, which even Mel could interpret as a warning to stay put, the guy staggered around to the back of the Beamer, hauled on the trunk. Up it came, blotting out their rearview vision.
'What if he finds the package?' she whispered.
'Then he finds it,' Sleeps said, sounding grim. Melody glanced across, then felt a more intense frisson, one that knifed into her guts, Sleeps with the little gun, the .22, holding it flat against his right thigh.
'I thought you said that wasn't loaded,' she hissed.
'Sssh. He'll hear you.'
'But --'
'Oh-ho!' croaked the guy from the rear.
'Fuck,' Sleeps said. Gently, very gently, he eased the door-release towards himself until it clicked. 'Get down,' he said. 'Get way down.'
'Don't do it, Gary. The guy's got a --'
There came a high-pitched yelp from the rear, swiftly followed by the Beamer rocking on its springs. A number of dull thuds. Then a bang as the trunk slammed down.
Rossi slid into the back shaking one hand out, the knuckles skinned and bleeding. But looking at his other hand, eyes fixed on the machine-pistol that gleamed blackly in the dim light, a mix of metal and plastic that Melody wanted to believe made it a toy.
'An Uzi,' he breathed. 'Sleeps? It's a motherlovin' Uzi.'
'Looks like it,' Sleeps said, reaching forward to replace the .22 in the glove compartment.
'Whaddya think, is it a sign?'
'Is he ...?' Mel swallowed hard. 'Where's the guy?'
'In the trunk.'
'Is he okay?'
'The best,' Rossi said, using his sleeve to polish the Uzi's barrel.
Sleeps put the Beamer in gear, indicated right, rolled off the apron. 'You ever shot an Uzi before?' he said.
'Never, no. Remind me to make a wish before I blow some fucker away.'
'This guy in the trunk,' Mel said. 'He's not dying or anything, is he?'
'Nope.'
'Or already dead.'
'I barely tapped him, Mel. The guy just collapsed.'
Sleeps looked across. 'Now'd be a good time to walk away, Mel. We drop you off, you take a holiday in Dubrovnik, then head for home. No one's any the wiser.'
'It's not that,' Mel said, realising that, even if she could've gone for the pad and pen, her hands were shaking too hard to write. 'I'm just wondering if the guy's actually bleeding out. I mean, that's a fake Louis Vuitton I've got back there.'
Doyle
Niko saw Doyle off at the airport, Doyle taking the short hop out to Santorini to rendezvous with Sparks, Sparks booking all the way through and due in on an afternoon flight. This after Niko put his foot down, no way was he having Doyle, uncredited and on holidays, hanging around the Piraeus waiting for Karen and Ray, maybe starting a firefight that'd get Italian tourists massacred, as tempting as the prospect might seem just talking about it. Niko with some loose ends to tie up at the office before he could take a few days off, join them in the islands.
He winked and patted his breast pocket, where his phone was. 'I'll keep you posted, okay?'
Doyle went through the departure gate backwards, fluttering her fingers at him, specifically the finger with the fake emerald. Although intrigued, she had to admit, as to what his proposal might be, Doyle had told him the night before, Niko walking her back to her hotel, how the ring wasn't an engagement ring per se, more of a promise from this guy she was seeing, Ted. Niko just shrugged. Doyle had seen movies with less in them than that shrug.
The flight was all take-off and landing, took forty minutes. Doyle taxi'd down from the airport high on a plateau and winkled out a place to stay in Fira in jig time, then went out and rented a moped. Found a beach down the coast, a shack that served beers and ice-cream, club sandwiches. Ordered a frappé, then changed her mind had had a cocktail, a Tequila Sunrise, it just seemed right, sitting out on the veranda overlooking the beach under a wide umbrella, the Aegean like a vast sapphire sparkling up new. A narrow spit way off to the right edging out into the sea, a tiny white church perched at the very end. The breeze still balmy, although Doyle could smell it on the salty air, the heat that'd be bearing down any time soon.
Except just when everything was coming up Doyle-shaped, this professor type gets in her space. Forty-ish, a narrow head shaved tight to the sides and bald up the middle, the bald bit red and peeling, sunscreen glistening, like he was trying to sauté the bare flesh. Wearing horn-rimmed specs, pushing them back up his sweaty nose all the time, the guy sponging his brow every three seconds with a damp white handkerchief.
'Of course,' he said, droning on like some massive four-eyed insect, Doyle itching to just swat him, 'most people think it was the eruption that destroyed the Minoan civilisation, whereas it was actually the Myceneans invading from the north.'
'Kicking the crap,' Doyle said, 'out of these half-drowned Minoans.'
'In a manner of speaking, yes. But by then their civilisation had run its course. They were already in terminal decline.'
'So the Mycenaean guys did them a favour, putting them out of their misery.'
'That's one way of looking at it, certainly. Although the Minoans might not agree.'
'They probably wouldn't,' Doyle agreed, 'being drowned three thousand years and all.'
The guy not really listening, his Adam's apple trapped above the buttoned-up shirt working hard as he made his play. 'If you'd like to see the remnants of the volcano while you're on Santorini,' he said, 'I'd be delighted to be your guide.'
'Sorry, but looking into holes in the ground isn't on my list of priorities right now.' Doyle with no plans beyond her second Tequila Sunrise and a vague intention to meet Sparks off her flight.
'It's actually an island,' the guy said. He pointed out over the tiny white church at a clump of black smudges visible in the horizon's haze. 'Santorini is just part of the rim of the ancient volcano.'
'No shit.'
'There's a boat-tour,' he said, scraping his chair closer. 'You get to see all the islands and walk up on the volcanic one. At the top they'll let you hold some rocks, feel how warm they are.'
'Because this is why I've come on holiday. To fondle coal.'
'Then they'll dig into the earth so you can see the steam emerge. Most people think it's smoke,' he smiled, 'but it's actually steam.'
'The ground is steaming?'
'It's live. The volcano, I mean. I didn't mention that?'
'No one,' Doyle said, 'mentioned that.'
'Amazing, isn't it?'
'What, that there's lunatics who want to live next door to a volcano?'
The guy got a bang out of that one. 'The balloon isn't likely to go up any time soon,' he said. 'And even if it was, there's an early-warning system in place. We can read volcanoes now, we know when they're going to erupt.'
'This,' Doyle said, 'by comparison with the dopey Minoans, who didn't know volcanoes from pigshit.'
'It certainly would have helped their cause if --'
'I have my own early-warning system.'
'Oh?'
'Yeah. Someone tells me a volcano is live, I hop a plane.'
The guy chuckling. 'I really don't think there's any need --'
'A guy shot at me,' Doyle said, 'three days ago. So you can see how I might feel about unnecessary risks.'
Doyle feeling these strange tremors in her shoulders, maybe in sympathy with the ancient volcano. Tapping into its memory, the after-shocks still buried in the island's subconscious. Realising, now, why she'd kept herself so busy the last few days, flying here, scooting there, chasing Madge, then Ray ... Doyle, fourteen years on the force, had never been shot at before. Now, for the first time in her life, she knew for sure she was going to die, and not in theory, some Buddhist grand-scheme bullshit. She felt it, a sucking black hole in the pit of her stomach, how she was already dying.
Doyle and the Minoans, in terminal decline.
One time Doyle'd lain back in the bath after pulling the stopper and let the water drain away the deliciously light floating, feeling her body get heavy and awkward again, the walls of the bath closing in like a porcelain coffin. Doyle'd never done it again.
The guy looked a little green now under the sunburn. 'Shot at you?' he croaked.
'With a gun.' Doyle pointed her forefinger, cocked her thumb. 'It's why I'm here, on the run.'
'You mean he's still ...'
'Yep.' Doyle snapped down her thumb. 'Bang, you're dead.' Then drained her glass, the last of the Tequila Sunrise sliding down smooth. 'So,' she said, beaming a bright smile, 'when did you say that boat-tour is leaving?'
Karen
'What'll I do with the key?' Karen said. 'I mean, just leave it in the ignition? What?'
Karen unloading the khaki duffel, her sports hold-all with the few essentials she'd picked up in the ferry's shops. Then she got back in the cab again and filched the Tom Waits from the glove compartment. Wondering if she should leave the van unlocked or lock it up and hide the key somewhere, the parking bay cavernous in the bowels of the ferry, everyone revving their engines despite the signs that said not to, making it hard for Karen to hear herself think.
In the end she left the key behind the front wheel on the driver's side, Ray'd find it or he wouldn't. His call, she thought, making her way forward.
'See,' she said, 'if he can say that, how it's never about me, he just doesn't get it. I told him straight off, soon as we met, I had priorities. One, me. Two, you. Except,' she said, scratching Anna's forehead, 'not necessarily in that order, they're just two sides of the same thing. And if he doesn't get that, he's not the guy I thought he was.'
Anna growled, a puzzled-sounding note in her coarse timbre.
'I know, hon.' Karen could sympathise, Anna drugged up for two days straight, coming around in a dungeon full of noise with a hangover to beat all. The front of the ferry clanking down now, light streaming in around the edges. Anna growling against the revving engines, someone back there honking because he was stuck behind the van, no one arriving to pick it up.
Karen tugged on Anna's ear and stoically accepted a lashing from her bushy tail. 'What he's saying is, it's never about him. Am I right?'
Anna barked short and hard, rammed her flank against Karen's leg.
'Yeah,' Karen said softly, 'I liked him too. But c'mon, the guy has to fit in around us, he knows that. He doesn't, what happens you?'
The front of the ferry clanged down on the dock, the port bustling with delivery trucks, buzzing mopeds, guys like admirals in their white suits shouting orders that couldn't be heard over the revving engines, the ferry's rumble. Karen bent down, hugged Anna to her. 'What happens you,' she whispered, 'is you get abandoned, maybe wind up with someone even worse than Rossi.'
Anna stiffened, then threw back her huge head with a violence that sent Karen stumbling backwards, catching her heel on a metal stud and slamming down hard on the floor, right on her ass-bone. The murderous howl, magnified in the cavernous parking bay, drowned out everything, ferry's rumble included.
When Karen got back on her feet again all she could see was these tiny little black Os, every mouth in the port dropped open.
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 between 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.
Then down off the ferry into the port, Rossi pushing the suitcase rather than pulling, one of the little wheels gone wonky, Rossi steering it all over the port like he was divining for water. Puce even before they made the gate, inventing a whole new language, like he'd seen the Rapture and got Tourette's rather than the gift of tongues. Once they made it outside, the possibilities, Mel rattling them off from the guide book, opened up more or less straight away -- on the right the ferry terminal for the Ionian islands, with the bus station farther along the other side of the street. The train station opposite that, backing onto the sea. The place when they got in bristling with energy, engines hissing, a PA crackling in what Sleeps presumed to be Greek.
'The next one,' Mel said, consulting the timetable that wasn't just a foreign language, Sleeps intrigued by a whole new alphabet, 'goes in ten minutes. From here, Platform 1.'
'I'm leaving,' Rossi said, 'no fuckin place from no platform fuckin anything. You ever see Michael take a train?'
'Michael?' Mel said.
'Corleone,' Sleeps clarified.
Mel rolled her eyes. 'We could always cab out to the airport,' she said, 'take a flight.'
'Because,' Rossi approved, patting the suitcase, 'there'll be no customs, x-ray machines, on internal flights.'
'I don't know about that,' Mel said. 'But that way? We don't know for sure what time we get in to Palermo. On top of that, once we touch down, we still have to get from the airport out to the cruise port.'
'And even internal flights,' Sleeps said, 'go a lot higher than whirly chairs.'
'Eight minutes,' Mel said.
Rossi kicked the suitcase.
'There's always the bus,' Sleeps said.
'The bus?' Rossi, shocked, stared at Sleeps. 'The fuckin bus?'
'You don't want to take --'
'Why don't we,' Rossi said, 'just start hitching lifts? Or walk it? I mean, am I right? We're sharking two hundred grand, muling a little coke, trying to get a connection set up. You see what I'm saying. Johnny Priest says, "So how'd you get to Palermo?" I say, "It was sweet, man. We took the bus."' He spat. 'The guy'd bust a fucking gut.'
'Why would he have to know?' Sleeps said.
'I'd know.' Rossi thumped a thumb into his chest. 'Me.'
'Six minutes,' Mel said, drowned out by the droning PA that was, Sleeps supposed, saying the same thing as Mel, only in Greek. Sleeps, okay, was buzzing on the crizz, a little lightheaded from being up thirty-six hours. But intoxicated too by all the newness, everything fresh no matter where you looked.
'In this game?' Rossi said. 'What you need to be is independent. Covering all the angles. Like, what if the train breaks down? We're in fuckin Sicily, for Chrissakes. Chickens hanging out windows, the works.'
'I don't know about that,' Sleeps said. 'Sicily is a pretty modern country.'
'It's part of the Inter-Rail network,' Mel confirmed.
'Um, excuse me?'
Rossi whirled around on the guy with the bandana, the Ramones t-shirt. 'What?'
'You guys taking the train?'
'Who wants to know?'
'Uh, me,' the guy said. Exaggerating it, Sleeps could tell. Enjoying his own joke.
'I fuckin know it's --' Rossi began.
'How can we help?' Sleeps cut in.
'I'm just wondering if you know what time the next train leaves for Athens.'
'Dunno,' Rossi snapped, turning away. 'We're for Palermo.'
'Five minutes,' Mel said quickly. 'And it goes from here, Platform 1.'
The guy shook his head. 'They're saying that one's delayed,' he said, 'or maybe cancelled. But everyone's talking Greek, so I don't know when the next one's going.'
'It's all, er, Greek to us too,' Mel said.
Rossi, fuming, mopped sweat off his forehead with the cuff of the fatigues. 'I'm not on my way to Palermo inside the next hour,' he said, 'other than on any fuckin trains or buses, I'm stabbing some fucker in the heart. I'll do it, Sleeps.'
Sleeps heaved a sigh. 'I'll see what I can do,' he said.
Ray
Ray, like practically everyone else in the Peloponnese, had heard Anna howl. Then, from across the street, watched Karen march out of the ferry terminal and turn right to where the train station was right there, convenient, practically on the docks. Karen staring straight ahead in case she might see Ray somewhere and have to admit she was maybe looking out for him. Everyone giving her a wide berth, one girl and her wolf. One thing Ray didn't have to worry about, Karen wouldn't be mugged for any khaki duffels while Anna was around.
He cut diagonally across the street, angling towards a café beside the bus depot, a place he could watch the train station and see Karen coming out if for some reason the Greeks objected to transporting a wolf on their rail network. Took a seat in the shade, ordered a frappe and asked for ice in it, sparked a Marlboro light. An oily heat from the traffic shimmering the air, the sun high and fierce.
For a while he toyed with the notion of hopping the ferry to Italy, one due in from Bari in an hour or so. Ray liked good pizza. But the idea of going back on board so soon after an overnight from Trieste was too much, and Ray wasn't fully convinced as to why he should be the one, Karen coming the prima donna, to leave the country.
This was when he saw Rossi playing sherpas, pushing a suitcase along the other side of the street, Rossi togged out like a soldier now, his ragtag platoon dandering along behind him in civvies having a ball pointing stuff out to one another, Hey, lookit that, it's a cute little train station. Ray holding his breath, willing them to keep going ...
No go. A brief discussion outside, Rossi jabbing his forefinger around like he was conducting a mini-orchestra, something upbeat, Beethoven's Fifth, and then they all trudged into the dark maw.
So Ray had to decide fast, twist or stick. Except, twist and Karen'd know he was watching over her, Karen the independent type, none too keen on guys lurking in the shrubbery with her best interests at heart. Sticking, that all came down to one thing, whether Rossi was liable to try something in a public place, witnesses all over.
It was Ray, if he was Rossi, he'd have sat tight, watched Karen off the train in Athens, tailed her from a discreet distance. Except Ray wasn't Rossi. And what Ray knew of the guy, this coming from Karen, who was biased, okay, but Rossi was unpredictable. It comes to Rossi, she'd said, you need eyes in the back of your eyes ...
Then there was the last Ray'd heard from Rossi, up at the lake, Ray down for the count and still in shock after shipping the round that broke bone, Rossi hunkering down to say, 'Don't try and find me, Ray. No kidding. You won't even see me coming.'
So there was that, too. Ray and threats a bad mix.
He eased his arm out of the sling, packed the sling away in the hold-all. Pulled the shirt-sleeve down over the cast, buttoned it tight, tucked a five under his frappé and shouldered the bag, zigzagged through the traffic across the street. Still no idea of what he was going to do. But pretty sure he'd have enough, busted arm or otherwise, to face down Rossi. This being the plan until he made it to the front of the station and the big guy, Rossi's muscle wearing a t-shirt with a big pink daisy, came ambling out. Ray had a quick scan to make sure Rossi wasn't toddling along in his wake and said, 'Hey.'
The big guy paused. 'Yeah?'
'Don't suppose you know,' Ray nodded at the station, 'what time the next train goes to Athens?'
'The one that was supposed to go now,' the guy said, 'that's delayed, or maybe cancelled. Anyway it's not going.' He shrugged. 'Don't ask me when the next one goes.'
'Not waiting for it, huh?'
Whatever the guy said was drowned out by a mournful blare, a long hiss, the unmistakable shunting of rolling stock. The guy looking back at the station now, frowning as he scratched his jaw.
'Thought you said it wasn't going,' Ray said.
'Was what we were told,' the big guy said. He shrugged again. 'Must be for someplace else.'
'Probably, yeah.' Ray wriggled his shoulder, getting the bag comfortable. 'You in a hurry,' he said, 'to get to Athens?'
The big guy blinking at him now. 'Why?'
'We could rent a car,' Ray said. 'You and me. Split it two ways.'
'There's three of us,' the guy said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Two more in there.'
'Better still,' Ray said. 'A four-way split. That'd make it about what we'd pay on the train anyway.'
'I dunno,' the big guy said. Working the angles, Ray could tell. Trying to nail the scam. He said, 'I don't have any, y'know, credit card or nothing.'
'I'll rent the car,' Ray said, 'you can sort me out with cash. Yeah? Meet you back here, say half-an-hour. Are we on?'
'Yeah, okay. Half-an-hour.'
'Or thereabouts. I'm late, don't go running off, stiffing me for the whole car.'
'No worries,' the big guy said. He put out a hand. 'I'm Gary, by the way.'
'Jerry,' Ray said. They shook. 'Nice to meet you, Gary.'
'Likewise, I'm sure.' The guy hesitated. 'Listen, there's just one thing.'
'What's that?'
'You pick us up, any chance you'd mind pretending we're on Sicily, headed for Palermo?'
Karen
'Most people,' Pyle was saying, 'everyone's got a camera these days, they're happy with photographs, nice little keepsakes to jog the memory. Others, they want more, maybe they got engaged, fell in love. Something they can hang on the wall over the fireplace.'
He'd come over in '65, twenty-one years old, to serve his obligatory year in the Greek army, help keep an eye on the perfidious Turks. Lasted two months, Pyle refusing to say why, then found he couldn't go home. The disgrace, mainly. 'That and no one would pay my ticket.' So he bummed around Greece making sketches, landscapes mostly, he never did have an eye for people. Met Cohen on Idria. 'You know Leonard Cohen?'
'Not personally,' Karen said.
'Funny guy, you wouldn't think it from the songs. And Marianne, man, she was a looker. Soul to go with it too.' Leonard persuading Pyle he had talent, was an artist. 'But he told everyone that. Mostly I think he was trying to convince himself.'
Either way, Pyle stuck at it. Rode out the whole Colonels farrago, passing for Greek, Pyle fairly fluent, courtesy of his father, from long before he arrived in Greece. Then the tourists started coming back. Pyle being bi-lingual, he kind of fell into tour-guiding, week-long excursions into the islands. Bringing the sketchpad along. People started to notice, offered to pay for his drawings, the roughs. Wasn't long before he had his own shop, a one-room gallery up a side-street off the waterfront on Paros. 'I was never going to be rich, but I was living in the islands, all that sun, the people. And the light, Christ. Lawrence Durrell, you know him?'
'Again, not personally.'
'"God's eyeball," he called it. Which,' Pyle said, 'isn't something you capture with a camera unless you're professional, and good. Ever see that View over Toledo, El Greco?'
Karen nodding along, then shaking her head. The baked earth though the windows shimmering like hot biscuits, enough to dry out her eyes just looking at it.
'Man, that's a picture. They got it in the Met, in New York, it's a force a fuckin nature. It's Spain, okay, but the light's the same ... And El Greco, the Greek, was from Crete originally. Although, my own favourite? Laocoon, with the nude guys fighting snakes.'
'Nude?'
'What'd be the point of fighting snakes in togas? It's art, for Chrissakes.'
'And people email you their photos, is that it?'
'Telling me where they took it, all the details, what date. Even what time of day, if they can remember. So I can get the right angle, the light.'
'And off you go, easel under your arm.'
'Hi-ho, hi-ho,' Pyle grinned. Lying back in the seat opposite, the khaki duffel on the seat beside him, Anna's head resting on that. Gazing up at the guy now, her soulful brown eyes unblinking while he scratched between her ears.
'You don't just paint them from the photograph?' Karen said.
'Such cynicism from one so young and cynical.' He shrugged. 'I like the islands, Karen, being free to travel around. Anyway, a photograph? It's like one tile in a mosaic. I go where they were, I get to see what they saw, the whole vista, see if I can't give them more of a sense of it all. More the way they remember than how they saw it.'
'So what have you got on now?'
'Coupla things,' Pyle said. 'I generally let 'em build up, four or five, then take off for a month. One's up to the Acropolis, although a little different than usual, looking down into the amphitheatre, a nice sunset kicking in from off to your right, the west, the sky's a lovely bluey-green, like mouldy turquoise. Then there's the monastery over on Amorgos, you ever been?' Karen shook her head. 'Beautiful place,' Pyle said. 'Very peaceful. You can see why the monks hang out there. That movie, The Big Blue? They shot a lot of the exteriors there.'
Anna batting her tail against Karen's legs, making these squirmy whines way back in her throat. The girl responding, Karen believed, as much to Pyle's growly Southern drawl as his fingers scratching between her ears. He was easy on the eye too, greying but still cool, claiming one-half Greek, a quarter Spanish, one-eighth Cherokee. What she liked best was how he didn't give her the third-degree about who she was running away from back in Patras. Just rolled with it, leaving it to Karen whether she told him or not.
She said, 'I should mention, I've never seen Anna react like this before. Usually you'd be missing an arm by now, at least an arm. I mean, the girl's a killer twice over.'
Pyle grinned, chucked Anna under the chin. 'Pop was a park ranger,' he said, 'although originally a keeper at Athens Zoo, this before the Nazis came in. Anyway, when I was a kid? I wanted to be a park ranger too. Y'know, like Old Smokey?' Karen shook her head. Pyle shrugged. 'What I'm saying is, I always got on okay with the animals. Pop got posted to Alaska one time, Christ, we must've been the only Greeks in Alaska. The bears'd come in raiding the garbage, I'd be out there waving like they were Yogi and Boo-Boo. I never got this close to a wolf, though. Saw some from a helicopter once, Pop tracking these good ol' boys on Alaskan safari, so loaded they couldn't even hit their own fuckin helicopter from inside. Basically, they chased the poor bastards to death.'
Karen, a first time for everything, found herself wishing she was twenty years older, just for one night.
'So this gallery,' she said. 'Who looks after it when you're away?'
Pyle smiled. 'I had a dollar for every time I heard that question,' he said, 'I wouldn't need any gallery.'
'I'll just bet,' Karen said. 'But what I'm wondering is, did any of them ever offer to buy their way in?'
Doyle
First thing Doyle said to Sparks after kissing her cheek was, 'We're leaving.'
'But I only just got here.'
Doyle took one of Sparks' bags and marched off across the tiny terminal, out into the blinding glare to the cab she'd had wait right there at the front entrance. 'It's a volcano,' she said when they were in. 'The entire island, it's a live volcano. They've lost whole civilisations here.'
'Like, thousands of years ago.'
Doyle stared. 'You knew about that?'
'You didn't?'
Doyle was always the last to know. 'I checked,' she said. 'Last time the balloon went up was in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred and fifty. Which sounds to me like it's well overdue another balloon.'
Sparks shrugged. 'Where're we going?'
'First place that doesn't have cataclysmic destruction.'
'What about Niko and this friend of his?'
'He'll be ringing later.'
'What if he rings the Santorini code?'
'Then we find ourselves a new Niko.'
Sparks left it until the cab dropped them off at the port. With an hour or so to kill, they took a couple of coffees over to the edge of the dock, sat with their legs dangling. 'You okay?' Sparks said.
'I don't know.'
'What's up?'
'Ever been shot at, Sparks?'
'Nope.'
'Me neither. Not 'til Tuesday.'
'You're feeling it?'
'It's bubbling up, yeah.'
'So let it go.'
'I'm thinking I might. Soon as we're on the ferry, okay?'
'Fine by me.'
Doyle held on until the ferry cleared the rocky point that marked the last of Santorini. Then bawled. Going into it deep, barely aware of Sparks rubbing her back. The hard bubble in her chest taking a while to puncture, then easing out slow, one heave at a time. Coming out of it she heard Sparks say, 'Yeah, morning sickness. She's pregnant to some gypsy guy, he ran off last night. It's a tragedy.'
Doyle came up laughing through more tears, snuffling snot and wiping her eyes. A middle-aged Greek waiter standing there agog, tray dangling. Sparks said, 'While you're there, Zorb, I'll be having a mojito, heavy on the mint. Doyle?'
So they had a nice buzz on by the time the first island hove over the horizon. Early evening, like walking into a giant warm sponge coming down the ramp, Doyle oozing a slow sweat in the small of her back. They skirted the knot of hawkers with their day-glo signs promising swimming pools, A/C, asses milk in the bath, Doyle in no state to deal with a babble that sounded a lot like miners hawking up dust. They crossed the square and found a vacant table at the first café they came to, ordered cheeseburgers and beers. The square was lined on two sides with cafés, hostels, tourist bureaus. A life-size greeny-bronze statue on a roundabout of dusty white marble. The place quiet now the ferry was gone, the port officials in their white uniforms strolling back to base, the hawkers dispersed. Some backpackers, the stragglers, still wandering around, dazed by the heat. Across the way, in middle of the yachts moored against the dock, was one mocked up like a pirate ship, Jolly Roger and all, below that the Swiss flag, Doyle liked the combo.
'Money with a slow wink,' Sparks agreed. 'Speaking of which -- Trust Direct put up a reward.'
'Oh yeah? How much?'
'Ten percent.'
'Of the ransom.'
'Correct.'
'On what they paid or what's recovered?'
'On what they get back, I guess.' Sparks chugged some beer. 'In theory, just call me curious, how much would you keep?'
'How much would you?'
'Depends on what's left. And who's around when you're counting it.'
'Yeah.'
'You going to tell Niko? About the reward, I mean.'
'Niko's on need-to-know right now.'
'So what does he know? Just so I don't screw you, say the wrong thing.'
'Keep it social, Sparks, and you won't go far wrong.'
'You tell him about Frank?'
'Not yet, no.'
'But he knows you're suspended.'
'He thinks I'm on holidays.'
'Busman's holiday. Chasing bad guys in between cocktails.'
'I say too much, Sparks, especially about Frank, Niko'll shut me out.'
'And you don't want anyone getting to Ray before you do.'
Actually, Doyle was wondering if it wasn't Rossi she wanted after all. Put the skinny prick against a tree and pump a round into the wood about an inch from his ear, see how he coped with the fallout. Doyle believed he'd cry too.
'The Greeks get their hands on a pile of cash,' she said, 'no one knows how much there's supposed to be, you can kiss goodbye to any ten percent.'
'And then,' Sparks needled, 'there's the whole Ray issue.'
'Fuck the money, and fuck Ray.'
'Sounds like my kind of party.' The waitress, Jade by her name-tag, with wheat-blonde hair, deeply tanned, was wiping down the next table along. 'Do I need to bring my own Ray or are they, like, on tap?'
'There's only one,' Sparks said. 'He looks durable, though.'
Doyle said, 'Hey, there's no volcanoes here, right?'
The girl shook her head. 'That's Santorini.'
'Santorini we know about. What about here?'
'Back home, in New Zee? We have volcanoes. I come away for the summer, the last place I'm going is where they have volcanoes.'
Doyle nodded. Sparks said, 'So what's there to see?'
The waitress tucked her rag into a back-pocket, sat down and shook a cigarette free from a softpack of Marlboros. 'There's Homer's tomb,' she said, biting softly on the filter lighting up. 'A Venetian castle. Some monasteries, and there's windmills up at the top of the Chora. It's not what you might call culture central.' She nodded at their bags. 'You get somewhere to stay yet?'
'We're just in,' Sparks said. She held up her bottle. 'First beer.'
'You looking for a pool?'
'That all depends on your quality of cabana boys. I mean, I generally lean more towards willing than sculpted back home. On holidays? I'm thinking I'll treat myself to some sculpted.'
Jade grinned, then pointed out across the square to where Doyle could make out a beach curving away to a headland maybe quarter of a mile distant. 'Most people stay up in the village or around at Mylopotas, wherever the bars and clubs are. If you're not looking to be up all night every night, though, you'll want Ormos. There's no pool, but it's quiet day and night and the beach is right outside your front door. I stay there, so I can vouch for it being clean, daily sheet and towel changes. None of which has anything to do with the fact that if you book in using my name, I get commission.'
'Nice hustle,' Sparks said.
'It's a cool place. Cheap and laidback.'
'Sold. What's it called?'
'The Katina. Just take the shore road, it's about three hundred yards past the ESY, the health clinic. Make sure and tell them Jade sent you.'
'We'll do that. I'm Sparks, by the way. This is Doyle.'
Jade stubbed her smoke, checked her big Mickey Mouse watch. 'If you go now, you've a couple've hours to grab a nap, get your disco pants on.'
'I don't dance,' Doyle said.
'You don't dance?'
'Her and all the other tough guys,' Sparks said. 'Me, I like to dance. What are we talking, acid house? Will there be poppers and shit?'
'Christ,' Jade said, getting up. 'When's the last time you were in a club?'
'Not since God was a boy,' Sparks said. 'So what time are we hooking up? I mean, you're taking us out, right, showing us the town. Our treat, looking to get blitzed. What d'you say?'
'Appreciate the offer but I'm already out tonight. Although,' Jade said, 'we'll be getting together in the Blue Orange, you're welcome to come along. Just ask in the village where it is. Any time after eleven, we'll be there.'
'It's a date,' Sparks said.
Ray
'You're a sneaky prick, Ray, I'll give you that.' Rossi nodding a grudging approval. 'Except what I'm wondering is if you're being sneaky-sneaky or, y'know, super-sneaky.'
'Is that even loaded?' Ray said.
'That's perxactly the gamble,' Rossi said, waggling the .22, 'you're looking at right now. It's like --' He glanced across at Gary. 'What's that one with Walken?'
'Things To Do in Denver?'
'That's Andy Garcia. The other one.'
'True Romance.'
'The fuckin Vietnam one, man.'
'Deer Hunter,' Ray said. 'Walken sweats years of Russian roulette and then De Niro turns up, Bobby the jinx.'
Gary driving, Rossi riding shotgun but twisted around to face into the back to keep the .22 on Ray.
'So that's what you need decide,' Rossi said. 'Like, is this baby loaded or not?'
'Not.' Ray's plan, originally, had been to rent the car, then watch from up the street for Gary, Rossi calling him Sleeps, to bring everyone out front, so Ray knew Karen wasn't with them, Karen or the duffel. If she wasn't, Ray planned to keep them waiting, buy Karen some time. Except then, it was only the three of them, Ray reconsidered. Wondering if it mightn't mean less heartache in the long run, with Rossi heading for Athens, under the impression he was Palermo-bound, for Ray to be inside the tent pissing out.
'The last time?' Ray said, holding up his busted arm. 'It was a fluke you hit me. So I'm guessing, even if the gun's loaded, you're no Chris Walken. Or even James Woods.'
'Just out of curiosity,' Mel said, 'how come you're so sure?'
Mel with a vanity case propped on her knees, the lid up, a notebook in there, scribbling notes with an eyeliner pencil.
'The safety's off,' Ray said.
''Course it's off,' Rossi said.
'Except,' Ray said, 'you never took it off. So it's been off since before you whipped it out all Billy the Kid-like, the element of surprise. This after I watched you patting your pockets trying to remember where you'd stashed it. And only a moron'd walk around with safety off on a loaded gun, even a .22.'
Mel paused in her scribbling. 'That's what you're banking on? That he's not a moron?'
'What I'm banking on,' Ray said, 'is how hard it is to keep someone hostage. At least one person's got to watch over them all the time, in case they try something bogey. Then you're untying them, bringing them to the bathroom, tying them up again, cooking three times a day ... I mean, it's a full-time gig. Rossi, am I right?'
'Fuckin A,' Rossi said, glum.
'I mean, you can do it,' Ray told Mel, 'I'm not saying it can't be done. But there's techniques, y'know? You have to plan it out. In the Rangers there was whole courses you could do, how to manage prisoners of war.' Ray glanced up at Rossi. 'Anyway, I'm the one rented the car, gave you a lift. So if there's a hostage in this situation, it's actually you.'
'Whoa,' Mel said. 'Anyone's a hostage around here, it's me.'
'You're bearing up remarkably well,' Ray assured her, 'considering the stress.'
Mel did some simpering that looked to Ray like she had ants in her delicates. 'Point being,' he said to Rossi, 'you can't depend on Mel here, and Gary's got his hands full driving. Hey, I got another one,' he said to Sleeps. 'Kasparov.'
Sleeps nodding. 'The state capital of Indiana, that's Gary too.'
'So that leaves you, Rossi,' Ray said. 'Hostaging me with an empty gat.'
'Gat?' Mel said.
'Rod,' Rossi said sourly. 'Roscoe.'
'Roscoe?'
'Ray,' Rossi said, 'one pro to another, this isn't a you-me issue. It's about justice. Ethics, Ray.'
'So it's not about the two hundred gees. Which, I should point out, is now down to around one-thirty-five, less change.'
Rossi lowered his head, began butting his forearm. 'That's my gelt, Ray.' The voice coming muffled from the crook of his arm. 'I have it coming. I'm owed.'
'Possession's ten-tenths. You know the drill.'
Rossi, an idea brewing, looked up. 'How about I have Sleeps sit on you?'
'I'm sitting on no one,' Sleeps said. 'You think that's fun, some guy's nose up your crack?'
Rossi swore.
'I'm the one's owed,' Ray said. 'For renting the car, like.'
'I shook on that,' Sleeps reminded Rossi. 'Gave him my word.'
'This was before,' Rossi said, 'you realised he was Sneaky fuckin Ray.'
'I shook on it,' Sleeps insisted.
Rossi poking at his good ear with the muzzle of the .22. 'Karen swiped my sixty grand,' he told Ray. 'You know this, right? When I was inside, she ran off with sixty gees, my Ducati motorcycle and the .44, which she chucked in the lake. You were half-unconscious at the time, you might've missed that last bit.'
'I heard, after.'
'So I'm calling double-bubble.'
'Okay by me. But you better call it loud, so Karen hears you. No point telling me.'
'Double-bubble?' Melody said.
'On the inside,' Ray said, 'you get in hock to a guy for a pack of smokes? You have to pay back double.'
'I'm willing,' Rossi said, 'to forget the Ducati, the .44. But the sixty gees goes double-bubble. That way Karen walks away with, what, fifteen grand clear. Except,' he pointed at where his ear used to be, 'the wolf? She goes double-bubble too. I want both that bitch's ears.'
'Rossi, man -- how many times? Karen dumped me, ran off with the loot. For all I know she's in fucking Tibet. And you're the one took our phones, fucked them in the lake. So how'm I supposed to contact her?'
'She'll be hooking up with Madge,' Rossi said. 'Somewhere along this cruise there'll be a big reunion, fuckin cake and candles.'
'This is presuming Madge even makes the cruise.'
'This Madge,' Mel said to Rossi, eyeliner pen poised, 'being the woman you kidnapped who thought she was your mother.'
Rossi glanced across at Sleeps. 'Let's try keeping the personal shit personal,' he suggested. 'Let's just try that, see how it works.' Sleeps shrugged, kept his eyes on the road. Rossi came back to Ray. 'I'm seeing that cruise off anyway. Just to be sure.'
'We saw you on the ferry over,' Ray said, 'getting into Amsterdam. So Karen knows you're on your way. Still think she's going to make that cruise?'
'Put yourself where I am,' Rossi said. 'Down two hundred large. Would you see that cruise off?'
'I was sure Karen wouldn't blow the whistle, have cops waiting for me at any specific piers, then probably, yeah.'
'Rossi?' Mel said. 'I'm thinking we should cut our losses, head straight for Ios.'
Rossi glared. 'Our losses?'
'For as long as I'm still owed my ten thousand,' Mel said, 'plus expenses, then they're our losses.'
'That's agreed from way back,' Sleeps said.
Rossi put the muzzle of the .22 to his temple and pulled the trigger, click-click-click. Then said, to Ray, 'You think she'd do it?'
'Would who do what?'
'Karen. Sic the cops on me.'
Ray shrugged. 'I only knew the girl a week, Rossi. You've known her what, ten years? You tell me.'
Madge
Back when Frank approached Terry Junior to have Madge snatched, the first thing Terry'd done was have Frank audited.
'And you can just do that,' Madge said.
'You can pay enough,' Terry said, 'you can do anything, Christ, order an invasion of Iraq.' He caught the look on her face. 'Generally, though, it's the client provides the details, as part of the deal.' He checked his watch again, third time in two minutes. 'No way they're making it now,' he said.
Early evening, still balmy but with a hint of chill up on the liner's observation deck, the breeze flapping at Madge's headscarf, Madge with big round shades on, the whole Jackie O schtick.
'So you're saying,' she said, 'a million and a half.'
'You and him both, for a million-five each. The money going to the twins, with the surviving parent in charge of the spending until they reach 21. He never told you this?'
'No,' Madge said, neglecting to mention how she'd never asked. 'And the house is mine?'
'The mortgage was in Frank's name from when he remortgaged his own home to buy you yours. So that goes null and void. The bank, for once, gets screwed.' He slapped his bicep punching the air an uppercut. 'Up the workers.'
'But what about the circumstances? How he died.'
'You get charged, it goes to trial, then yeah, it'll get complicated. But the money's the twins', not yours. So someone'll have to, this presuming worst-case scenario, administrate your estate on their behalf, at least until they're 21. But that's not even an issue.' He turned away from the breeze, pulled his lapel up to light a cigar. 'You want to know what I think?' he said after some ruminative puffing. 'I think they'd all be happier if you never came home.'
Madge felt hollowed out, sipping a Bellini on the observation deck of the Patna, scanning the chaotic port below for a Karen-or Anna-shaped ant. Athens rising on three sides, a shallow white bowl washed now in delicate mauves and violets, the sun virtually gone. 'Either way I'm screwed,' she said. 'If go back I can't touch the money. And if I don't go back, I can't touch the money.'
'That's one way of looking at it.'
'There's no other way, Terry. I can't touch the money.'
'Sure. You can't touch it.'
'I'm not sure I follow,' Madge lied, Madge with a fair idea she was starting to see it now, Terry's plan all along.
'What you need,' Terry said, puffing on his cigar, 'is someone you can trust to do the right thing. By you and the twins.'
'You're talking about someone administrating the estate,' Madge said, 'on my behalf.'
'Exactly.'
'In which case it wouldn't matter where I was, back home or Bongo-Bongoland.'
'It'd probably be better if you were somewhere in the EU zone,' Terry said, 'for the sake of convenience, so everyone's singing off the same legal hymn sheet. But, in theory, yeah.'
'I don't know.' Madge aiming for a Little Bo-Peep vibe. 'It sounds awfully complicated.'
'That's partly a benefit,' Terry said. 'You open up a few shell companies, siphon off a little here, divert a bit there. Pretty soon it's a jungle a guy'd need a machete to get through.'
'What happens when it's all sucked dry?'
'Generally you'd sue whoever was taking care of the estate for you, this to prove your own innocence.' Terry peered at his watch, tapped the face. 'Eventually it goes to court, none of the principals turn up, hardly surprising when one of them's the invisible man. So the judge throws it out.'
'And where's the money?'
'Wherever you want it to be. If you're smart, lots of different places, preferably washed through investment portfolios, the blue-chip shit. You'll get low returns but it's safe until you need it. You want my advice, I'd say plunge on Chinese cement, take a punt on some radical energy shit, maybe nuclear power. But it's your money. Hold on, is that them?'
But it was only a family of immigrants, the cops wading in, batons drawn. 'I don't have anyone I can trust that way,' Madge said, reclining on the deckchair again. 'No one who's that clued in legally, I mean.'
'Not a problem. You want, I'll put my guys on it.'
'Yet again,' Madge said, 'that's incredibly generous of you, and very sweet.'
'Don't mention it.'
'But it sounds to me,' she went on, 'that something like that, it'd be expensive. Lawyers fees and what have you. I'd be afraid the money would be gone by the time it's all over.'
Terry grunted. 'I've seen it happen,' he said.
'Which'd put me back to square zero. Not even on the board.'
'If you were me,' Terry said, 'what I'd do is get my guys to out-source. Y'know? Find some young firm, they're new and keen, get them to hump the coal up the hill. Then, it all falls apart after, you've got the added benefit of knowing some lawyers got screwed too.' Another bicep-slap. 'Anyway,' he said, 'there's no way you're falling off the board. You're officially divorced now, right?' Madge nodded and toasted Terry with the Bellini. 'I was you,' he said, 'on a tub like this? I'd spread the word. Looking the way you do, I'd be surprised you didn't walk away from the cruise with about ten proposals, maybe even from the captain himself.' He raised his eyebrows. 'You know they have a shop on the third deck specialises in engagement rings?'
'I honestly don't know if I'll ever get married again,' Madge said, deftly parrying his clumsy lunge. 'Besides, it's far too early to --'
'Who's talking about getting married? I'm saying engaged, having fun, Christ knows you deserve it. Meet some new guys, let 'em buy you shit. Scrapping to impress you, tossing one another overboard.'
'You wouldn't be one of them?'
'Fuck no. I been married, got the t-shirt, it didn't fit. But don't worry about me, I'll keep a low profile. You want me gone, I'm gone. Or I can stick around, make sure no one gets any notions he shouldn't. It's up to you.'
The liner sounded its klaxon, a mournful blare that shuddered through its entire length, sounding to Madge like the lady had a cold coming on.
'That's final call,' Terry said, 'they're definitely not making it now. What'll we do, stay or go?'
Sleeps
'Rossi? I'm getting a little yawny over here.'
'Tough shit, you've had all the crizz.' Rossi slumped in the passenger seat, arms folded, cheesed off ever since he sparked a doobie and Mel, halfway through her second warning, puked across his shoulder into his lap. 'Stick your face in the breeze,' he said.
'One, we're stalled in a tailback. Two, it's humid enough out there to boil eggs. You want me to nod off?'
'Whaddya want me to do? Magic up some fuckin crizz?'
Things a little tense in the van, the cruise gone twenty minutes ago if it was leaving on schedule, traffic log-jammed on the outskirts of Athens. Everyone edgy, the stench of stale puke not helping. 'What I'm getting at,' Sleeps said, 'is Johnny's, y'know.'
'You've a Bob hope. That fucker stays sealed. Johnny said, being specific on it, how the load gets through intact.'
'But only saying that on the presumption you'd be dipping in. Making sure you didn't party it up, just tried a taster.'
'What're we looking at,' Ray said, 'coke?'
'Never you fuckin mind,' Rossi said.
'In the Rangers,' Ray said, 'for night sorties? They'd pass out the speed. Even in training. Guys were volunteering to go out. Queues to sign up, all this.'
'You had any common decency,' Rossi told Ray, 'any sense of fuckin shame, you'd be bringing something to the party, not sponging dabs of coke off us.'
Sleeps glanced at Ray in the rearview. 'You being in the Rangers, you'll have done some work with machineguns. Right? The heavy shit.'
'Sure.'
Rossi glaring across, not getting it. But then started to see, nodding along, as Sleeps said, 'So you could clue us in if we had, say, an Uzi.'
'Your Uzi's as straightforward as it gets,' Ray says. 'Just point and fire, you can't go wrong.'
'You'd think so,' Sleeps said as Rossi opened the door and got out, 'wouldn't you? Except none of us have any experience, never having been to any war zones or Miami Beach.'
Rossi slammed down the trunk of the car, hustled back into the passenger seat again. Started fumbling with the catches on Mel's suitcase. 'The fuck's with the Fort Knox?' he said.
'There's a combination,' Mel said.
'And what, I'm supposed to guess?'
'It's, erm, double-o seven.'
'Sweet suffering Cheez-Its.' Rossi sprung the locks, opened the case, holding the lid sideways so no passerby could glance in, spot the hardware. Then gave Ray the nod. Ray scooched up so he was peering down over Rossi's shoulder, holding his nose against the waft of puke. 'Nice, yeah. Where'd you pick it up?'
'Under the machinegun tree. So what's the skinny?'
'First off,' Ray said, 'it's not your actual Uzi. It's a copy.'
'A fake?'
'An Uzi rip-off. The stock's wrong, it looks like some kind of local adaptation. The Ingram, maybe?' Ray thinking out loud. 'But it'll do the same damage as an Uzi, don't worry about that.'
'So how's it work?' Rossi said.
'Work? You pull the trigger, bullets come out. How d'you think it works?'
Sleeps put the car in gear, rolled forward a few feet. 'Just presume for a second,' he said, knocking the car out of gear again, 'we're complete morons here, we never handled an Uzi before. Start at the start.'
'I could do that,' Ray said. 'Except, I get you tooled up, you'll point it at me and tell me take you to Karen.'
'I thought you said,' Mel said, 'you don't know where she is.'
'This is my problem.'
'I give you my word,' Rossi said.
'Rossi, no offence, but you've shot me once already.'
'That was a fluke. You said so yourself.'
'Yeah, but from there? With an Uzi? Even you couldn't miss.'
'Hey, Ray?' Sleeps said. 'Take a good look at me, man. I look to you the type that'd do good time in a Greek prison?'
'I don't know,' Ray said, 'if there's actually that type. Greek time, what I'm hearing, it's a tough stretch.'
'This is what I'm saying.'
Ray shrugged. 'See that catch,' he said to Rossi, 'left side, just behind the trigger guard. Pull it back, you'll get the mag out.'
Rossi slipped the magazine out, handed the Uzi back between the seats. Ray hunched over, the gun in his lap. 'Looks like it might be the Ero,' he said. 'The Croatians ran some Uzi knock-offs back in the early '90s, this could be one.'
'Fuck the history,' Rossi said, 'and make with the geography.'
'It's your basic Uzi,' Ray said. 'Sturdy, safe, reliable, the Israelis make good guns. Doesn't have many working parts, so it's easy to clean. You've got full, semi and single-shot options with the three-way safety. On full you're looking at, I think, sixteen, twenty rounds a second, some shit like that. The mag holding anywhere from 25 to 32 rounds, depending, the ammo nine millimeter, Parabellum, you'll pick it up anywhere. You want panic, just close your eyes and blaze away. You want accuracy you'll need to unfold the stock, tuck it in here,' he patted the hollow just below his shoulder, 'and get yourself set solid. Anything else you need to know?'
'Where's the safety?' Rossi said.
'Right, yeah. This is a feature, why the Uzi's so safe. See here?' he said, picking up the gun, patting the ball of his thumb against the back of the pistol grip. 'You need to be squeezing that while you're pulling the trigger. A bit of practice, you can do it with the first joint of the thumb, you're not even thinking about it.'
'Which one's the single round option?'
'This,' Ray said, making the adjustment. 'Anything else?'
'Nope, that should just about do it.'
'That's what I'm hoping,' Ray said, sitting back, elbow tucked into his side, the Uzi pointed at the back of Rossi's seat. 'Okay, new plan. Sleeps? We're going to Crete.'
'Crete my hairy hoop,' Rossi said. 'Gimme that.'
'Take it.'
'Christ!' Rossi hunched himself up, twisting around to reach into the rear.
'First though, you'll need to be sure it isn't loaded.'
'The fuck're you talking about?' Rossi holding up the Uzi's mag. 'I got the bullets.'
Sleeps hearing it like Jimmy Dean, Jimmy tumbling out of the planetarium, Sal Mineo riddled on the steps.
'Sure you do,' Ray said. 'But now what you're dealing with, the gamble you're taking, is whether the guy left one up the spout. He was drunk, right?'
Karen
Pyle was staying over in Athens so he could sketch up at the Acropolis next day, so Karen left Anna with him in a little public park near the docks and went on down to the quay.
The liner was a horizontal skyscraper all lit up and festooned with balloons and ribbons. Eight, maybe nine stories high. Karen asked at the booking office and was told the cruise was running behind time as per usual but had already boarded, too late for non-passengers to get on. No, there was no message for Karen King. Ringing the ship, yes, that could be arranged.
The operator on board put her through to Margaret Doyle's room but there was no answer and no answering service. Karen in the phone booth watching the floorshow outside, a horde of Albanians busting out of a van stopped by customs, Christ, it was guerilla warfare, heads getting cracked, not all of them cops'. Sirens whining. This on top of bedlam anyway, buses, scooters, delivery vans. Karen couldn't work out how the Greeks, having first dibs on the set-up, hadn't made mayhem an Olympic sport.
She hung up, went back to the desk.
'Would you mind checking,' she asked the guy, portly under a waistcoat and dicky-bow combo, oily hair, 'if there's a spare ticket going under Margaret Doyle's name? For Karen King.'
The guy consulted the computer, found her name. Went to print off her details. 'Hold on,' Karen said, 'I'm hoping to book another place. What's the policy on pets?'
The policy was flexible, depending on the kind of pet. The liner boasted kennel accommodation down in the hold.
'Cool,' Karen said. 'Put me down for one kennel space. Actually, make that two spaces.'
The guy went to say something but was drowned out by the liner's klaxon, this blaring moan. Karen waited for it and wasn't disappointed, Anna's howl echoing faintly through the port as the klaxon died away. The guy telling her she needed to get to the ship fast, it was pulling out in ten minutes, he'd ring ahead and tell them she was coming.
She jogged back through the port, dusk thickening now. Into the little park, hearing a murmur of conversation even before she got all the way round the shrubbery to the bench facing out over the ornamental lake, the little fountain. Then realised, coming all the way around, it wasn't a conversation as such. A tall guy, skinny, flicking these amber beads and asking Pyle where the wolf's owner was while Pyle spoke in low tones to Anna, one hand on her collar. Anna with a baleful glitter in her one good eye.
Karen breezed by the Greek, saying, 'Hey, you're looking for me?'
The Greek turned, adjusting his stance so he could keep Karen and Pyle in view. Except Karen went straight to Pyle, the bench, patting Anna as she hunkered down at the khaki duffel, unzipped it. She said, over her shoulder to the Greek, 'You mind if I ask you something?'
The guy shrugged, frowning now.
Karen came up holding the .38, aiming it two-handed at the guy's groin. 'What's the worst idea you've ever had?' she said.
'This one, probably.' The guy cool, still flicking his beads.
'Back up,' she said, advancing. 'Keep going,' she said when he came up against the shrubbery. He ducked his head reversing into the loose foliage, pushing back until they emerged into the little clearing, the soil dusty brown. 'Sit down,' she said.
'In this suit?' the Greek said, a dry leaf trapped above his right ear.
Karen cocked the .38. The Greek shrugged, pocketed his beads and folded himself up, the guy like an ironing board going down. 'Grab your ankles,' Karen said, then went around behind, patted him down. Came up with a stubby black automatic he had holstered under his left armpit. 'Heckler & Koch nine millimeter,' she said, 'the P-7.'
'You know your guns,' he said.
'It says it on the side.' Karen tucked the gun into her waistband and patted the guy's breast pocket, found his wallet, worn leather, hefty. 'You shouldn't carry that in your breast pocket,' she told the Greek, backing away. 'Good suit like that, you'll ruin the cut.'
'I'll remember that,' he said.
'Remember I know where you live now. What's your name?'
'Niko.'
'Okay, Niko, the snazzy little holster's telling me you're a cop. Except, this was an official gig, you'd have back-up. How come you're on your own?'
Maybe I'm not.'
'I saw your guys just now,' Karen said, 'when the Albanians made their break. So I'm guessing your Greek cop is about as patient as cops anywhere else, as subtle. You had a partner, he'd have shot me dead by now.'
'I heard a dog howling,' Niko said, 'it sounded like some dog. So I came to take a look.'
'Bullshit.' Karen on an adrenaline buzz, trying to figure the guy's accent. 'Where's Doyle?'
'Doyle?'
Karen, still behind him, placed the muzzle of the .38 against his exposed neck. 'Just so we're clear,' she said. 'Everything in the world I care about is right here. It looks like anyone's taking that away, you won't get to see it happen.' She forced his head forward so it hung down over his chest. 'I won't ask again. Where's Doyle?'
'I don't know.'
'But she's here in Athens, right?'
'She was, yes. Now she's supposed to be on Santorini.'
'Supposed to be?'
'She was there. She's gone now.'
'And you don't know where.'
'No.'
Karen considered. 'I got two options here,' she said. 'One, you promise to behave, I can take you along. Or, it looks like you're going to start causing problems, I can do you now.'
Niko shrugged. 'I was asked to do a friend a favour,' he said. 'That's all I'm in for.'
Karen called, 'Pyle?'
'Uh-huh?'
'There's some pills in the front pocket of the duffel, a bottle of water. Mind bringing me them?'
Karen made it a treble dose, just to be on the safe side. Twenty minutes later, Niko snoring gently, she was tucking the guy's Heckler back into the holster, wiped down, the wallet into his hip pocket. The liner's lights still visible, just about, when she stepped out of the laurel.
'Sorry you got involved,' she said.
Pyle shrugged. 'Looks like you missed your cruise.'
'I'll catch it up.' She consulted the itinerary. 'It gets into Paros tomorrow morning, first stop.'
'You think that's smart?' Pyle said. 'I mean, I don't know what's going on but you just doped a cop, waving a gun around. Think they'll let that slide?'
Karen thought about that. Realising now, with the cruise gone, she hadn't thought much about what'd happen after she hooked up with Madge again.
'What d'you suggest?' she said.
'Skip the cruise, that's first. I was you, I'd go to ground, get Anna here squirreled away safe. Pick an island, any island. Just so long as it's not Paros.'
'Except it doesn't matter if I skip the cruise,' Karen said, 'when I'm booking Anna on board. First thing they'll ask when they're checking the booking offices is where'd the wolf go.'
'So don't book her on.'
'I'm not leaving her behind, Pyle. She's the whole point I'm here.'
Pyle shook his head. 'You're not seeing it. You need to rent a van, something spacious. Then book it on, you and me, Anna's hid away. Although,' he said, 'it'd probably be better if I was the one rented the van, did the booking.'
'You and me?'
'If I'm not sticking in where I'm not wanted.'
'I thought you had to sketch the Acropolis.'
'It's been there thousands of years,' Pyle said. 'Where's it likely to go?'
Rossi
'Two ways we can do this,' Ray said. 'My way or the hard way.'
'There's a hard way now?' Sleeps said.
Ray laying it out, the sneaky fuck admitting, juiced up now holding the cannon on Rossi, he knew where Karen'd gone. 'But how could there be no cops?' Rossi said, hardly daring to believe it.
'Not all over,' Ray said. 'I mean, there's cops, Crete's a big island. But down on the south coast, the south-west? People basically look out for themselves.'
'Man, that's beautiful. I mean, it's a thing of fuckin beauty.'
'And makes it all the more likely,' Ray said, 'Karen'll talk a three-way split. I mean, who's she squawking to?'
'Three ways,' Sleeps said.
'Karen gets some,' Ray said, 'I get some, you get some.'
'There's three of us,' Sleeps said, 'including Mel.'
'So you're splitting your split.'
'Which is how much?' Rossi said.
'About forty grand.'
'Each?'
Ray shook his head.
'Shit,' Rossi said.
'By the time this is over,' Sleeps said, 'we're going to wind up owing money.'
The rear door swung open and Melody climbed in. She distributed the tickets, sullen, still pissed at Ray for ratting out Karen.
'So what time do we leave?' Ray said.
'Half past midnight,' she said. 'Getting into Heraklion at eleven-forty tomorrow.'
'When can we board?'
'Any time.'
'Okay,' Ray said. 'Sleeps?'
'Where to?'
'Dock seven,' Mel said. Sleeps eased along the quay, turned in at dock seven, waving back at the guy guiding him up the ramp.
'You don't think Karen has enough grief in her life?' Mel asked Ray.
'Karen thrives on grief,' Ray said, as Sleeps drove up to the end of the orange-lit parking area. 'Grief's what keeps her going. Anyway, in the long run? She'll be better off knowing she can relax, Rossi won't turn up some day she's not expecting him.'
'She didn't rip me off in the first place,' Rossi said, 'I wouldn't be chasing her nowhere.'
'That's a point,' Ray said. 'Gary? You want to get tight against the wall, man. Last thing we want is someone clipping the car, insurance details being asked for, drawing down heat.'
Rossi, grudging it, had to admit Ray had style. Real cool, this one-armed bandit holding a cannon on Rossi but still thinking ahead, worrying about insurance details. Now using, Rossi couldn't help but notice, his busted arm to unzip the hold-all.
'Hey,' Rossi said. 'I thought your arm was broke.'
'Arm's busted,' Ray agreed. 'The hand's fine, though.' He pulled the strap of the hold-all over his head, placed the Uzi inside. Then opened the door and stepped out of the car. 'See y'all up on deck,' he drawled, closing the door.
'The fuck's he going?' Rossi said, shoving his door open. Then heard it clang against the metal wall.
By the time he got Sleeps out of the driver's seat and crawled across, chased up the steep metal steps, found his way out onto the top deck, Ray was already at the rail with the hold-all dangling from his shoulder at waist height and pointed at Rossi.
'She isn't on Crete,' Rossi said, 'is she?'
'I told you, she ran out. She could be anywhere. And that's far enough.'
Ray raising the Uzi out of the hold-all a little, so Rossi could see his finger on the trigger. Except Rossi'd taken grief all his life, about Italian tanks, how they had fifteen reverse gears, all this. And up here, in full view of the quays? Ray was shooting no one.
He kept going. 'You know I'm right, Ray. Be honest now. I'm owed.'
'Karen tells it different.'
'Karen who ran out on you.'
'Don't do it, Rossi.'
They'd carve it on his headstone. Don't do it, Rossi.
'Do what?' he said. 'All we're doing's talking, right?'
Ray backing off now. The space behind him narrowing, the decks squeezed between the rail and the big black funnel. Rossi giving away fifty, maybe sixty pounds, three or four inches in height. But Ray had that busted arm.
'Something you should know, Rossi.'
'What's that?' Rossi measuring the distance. Another two, three steps ...
'This isn't Sicily.'
'Fuck're you talking about?'
'You're in Greece.'
Rossi felt a rumbling beneath his feet and made up his mind, fake left, dive right. He put his hands up, palms out, said, 'We can sort this, Ray. One pro to another. We can do a deal here.'
'What kind of deal?'
'Fifty-fifty split. She's fucked you, she's fucked me. So we fuck her back.'
'I'm retired,' Ray said but Rossi was already lunging. This as the klaxon blared, the funnel juddering. Rossi aiming for the hold-all, the Uzi and Ray's bogey arm, the one he'd have trouble swinging up fast enough to ...
But he was still only halfway there when his sucking gut told him, shit, he'd guessed wrong. Ray the ex-Ranger quicker than Rossi would've believed, the Uzi's barrel swinging up to meet his lunge, Rossi so close the muzzle-flash blinded him even as his head exploded.
SATURDAY
Ray
'There's fink,' Ray said. 'Fink, rat, squeal, snitch, nonce.' He thought about it. 'Finger, peach and stool. How many do you need?'
Ray with a nice buzz on, five or six highballs down the hatch, heart still pumping from dragging Rossi's dead weight one-armed. The rush easing off now, chilling into what he could only describe as mellow exhilaration. Ray, for all his time in the Rangers, he'd never shot down cold on anyone before.
'One'll do it.' Melody sniffed. 'The one that sums up how you feel about Karen.'
'Then definitely fink. F for Friday, I for ink.'
'I know how to spell fink, Ray.'
The bar quiet, only a few hardy souls still drinking this late. Or, Ray trying to focus on the mirror-clock behind the bar, this early. Most of the plush velvet seats, the semi-circular booths, taken up with prone backpackers, rucksacks piled every which way.
'What you might find interesting,' Ray said as Mel bent to her notebook again. 'They're all verbs used to be nouns.'
She checked her notes. 'It's possible to peach?'
Mel with the idea Ray was some kind of gangster, hard-boiled. Ray hated to disappoint the ladies. 'Nothing sweeter than a juicy peach,' he said. He sipped on his highball and leaned in along the polished counter of the bar. 'Hey, can you keep a secret?'
'That all depends,' Mel said, edging closer.
'It only has to be a secret from Sleeps. Otherwise you can tell whoever you want.'
'Even Rossi?'
'Why would you want to tell Rossi?'
'No reason. I'm just checking.'
'Between you and me, Mel, everything's a secret from Rossi. That,' he warned, 'being the biggest secret of all.'
'I won't tell anyone,' Mel said.
'Tell 'em what?'
'This secret I can't tell Sleeps.'
'Oh yeah.' Ray tapped a finger against his nose, mainly to buy time, then remembered. 'Karen isn't gone to Crete,' he said.
'No?'
'Nope.'
Melody flipped back a page or two, scratched out a line. 'So where has she gone?'
'Ah.' Ray waggled a forefinger. 'That's a different secret.'
'It's all part of the same secret, Ray.'
'Actually,' Ray said, considering, 'I haven't the faintest idea where she's gone. For all I know she's headed for Crete.'
'But you just said --'
'I just picked an island,' Ray said. 'First one popped into my head.'
'So why Crete?'
'It's a big place. Wild in spots. You want to hide away, you and your wolf, there's plenty of room.'
'So you'd have gone to Crete,' Mel said.
'I had a wolf, yeah.'
'Did you tell Karen that?'
'About Crete?' Mel nodded. 'I don't know if I mentioned Crete specifically,' he said. 'Why?'
'Because if you did, it's the last place she'd go.'
'She knows I won't be chasing her.'
'You just broke up with her, Ray. Think she's taking your advice on anything now?'
'I'm not entirely sure,' Ray said, 'it was me broke up with her.'
'So she dumped you. Same difference.'
'Being honest, and technically speaking, I don't know if we were together long enough to break up. It was barely a week.'
Mel, the tip of her tongue poking from the corner of mouth, scribbled another note, underlined it twice. 'So what'll we do about the ten grand?' she said.
'What ten grand?'
'The ten we're owed by Rossi and Sleeps. For their passports.'
'We?'
'I'll cut you in for two. Get it back and there's two in it for you.'
'Sorry, Mel. I'm retired.'
'Three. Three's my final offer.'
Ray heard himself tell Mel how much he had stashed in a safety deposit box. How little he needed three grand, no offence, thanks all the same.
Mel, eyes huge, licked her lips. 'You're kidding.'
'Don't believe the hype, Mel. Crime pays. Ask Marx.' He drained his highball. 'Anyway, I've a notion Rossi won't be following through on that deal he'd planned. I'd say your ten gees are gone.'
Mel put her pen down and stared gloomily into her Shirley Temple, stirring it with the big pink swizzle stick. 'Not really up to speed on the whole knight in shiny armour bit, are you?' she said.
'You're white,' Ray said, 'you speak English, you have a credit card. There's about three billion people'd think they'd died and gone to heaven they had half your chances.'
'So much,' Mel said, 'for chivalry.'
Ray signaled the barman. 'Chivalry,' he said, 'is strictly from hunger.'
Sleeps
Sleeps woke to gnawing panic, already reaching for the steering wheel, shit, his worst nightmare, falling asleep at the --
Then realised, relief flooding through, the car was parked, still deep in the guts of a ferry. He knuckled his eyes hauling himself upright, saying, 'Sorry, I must've dozed off. What were you saying?'
Except she was gone. Leaving a note on the dashboard, 'Gone to freshen up, back soon. x Mel.'
Not saying, no surprise there, what time she left.
Sleeps, fiddling with the stereo, getting only static, snatches of Greek gabble, wasn't sure if he should be worried. On one hand, Rossi'd been gone for hours. On the other, Rossi'd been gone for hours.
Sleeps, feeling a little guilty about it, was more worried about Mel. Rossi could handle himself, mostly, but Mel was a bit more delicate. Not to look at, okay, the girl was built like a gingerbread cottage. But there was something Sleeps liked about the fragile way she thought. Ideas that went off at tangents, looped around, tied her up in knots. Sleeps, dozing off one time, tried to imagine what one of Mel's thoughts might look like as an arc and was so impressed he woke up dizzy. Or maybe he was so dizzy he woke up impressed.
The girl asking him, not long after Rossi took off after Ray, 'How come you let Rossi call the shots?'
'The guy's happier,' Sleeps'd said, 'he thinks he's the one running the show.'
'Okay, but what about you? When do you get happy?'
Sleeps had to think about that one. 'I always thought,' he said, 'I was a coward for not wanting to go to war. I mean in theory, no one's letting me in any man's army, right? But, you think about it, going off to war and shit, you're thinking, no fucking way. I used to say I was a pacifist, like it was a philosophy, not wanting someone to blow your head off. Especially as it's always some other fucker's war, some bastard sitting in an office ringing up some bastard on the other side, saying, "Hey, I got a surplus on rockets over here, want a war?"' Sleeps glanced in the rearview. 'How come you're not taking notes?'
'It's, um, all up here,' Mel said, tapping her temple.
'Anyway,' Sleeps said, 'I didn't realise, you go off to war despite the fact you're crapping it, not because you're some kind of hero. Most guys, you'll find, they're not heroes. And then, most soldiers make it back. They didn't, you'd run out of soldiers fast, one way or another.'
'Okay. But what's that have to do with Rossi ordering you around?'
'I seen a movie once,' Sleeps said, 'you had this ordinary guy, a private, and his sergeant or corporal, can't remember which but the dude gets shot, a sniper. So the ordinary guy, he radios back to base, he's told, "You're promoted, congratulations." So the guy, it's bad enough he's in the middle of a fucking war, in the jungle, he has to take charge. Making sure everyone else makes it too. I mean, most soldiers make it back, like I said. But lots don't.'
'So you're saying,' Mel said, 'it's a lack of ambition.'
'That's one way of looking at it, I guess. Plus, I go on the nod. You go back through history, look at the achievers, Alexander, Khan, Ali, Rossi -- there's not many narcoleptics in there, y'know? Or, say they were even prone to the anytime siesta, no one's hailing it as any kind of unfair advantage they had over everyone else.'
'I wouldn't,' Mel murmured, 'have necessarily put Rossi and Alexander the Great in the same bracket.'
'Valentino Rossi. You never heard of him?'
'Can't say as I have.'
'The Doc, yeah, greatest motorcycle rider in history. So good he was planning to race cars, he was bored winning on bikes. The guy's Rossi's hero, the reason he picked the name Rossi.'
'Rossi isn't his real name?'
'So he says.'
'So what is it?'
'Dunno, he never said. Anyway, the Doc, he wasn't given to forty winks whizzing through any chicanes, y'know?'
'Isn't there any kind of treatment you can take?' Mel said. 'For the narcolepsy, I mean.'
Which must have been the point where Sleeps dozed off. Now he wondered if he shouldn't go take a look-see upstairs. Rossi, taking off after Ray, had said to stick with the car, but Sleeps couldn't see what he was achieving by staying put. Plus his sugar levels were dropping, he hadn't eaten in five, six hours, this on top of the big black hole opening up where the lake of crizz used to be. A crash in the post, Sleeps'd been there before, a plummet like a suicidal lemming.
Not pretty.
He locked the car, leaving the key behind the driver's wheel in case Mel came back down, and got up on deck just as the ferry docked at some port, reversing in. Sleeps hung on the rail watching the folks beetle up onto the orange-lit dock, shivering now in his shorts and pink daisy shirt. It was only then it occurred to him that Rossi and Mel, either or both, might have already jumped ship.
He went back down to the car, opened the trunk. No fake Louis Vuitton. He pulled up the trunk's floor and hauled out the spare tire, expecting Johnny Priest's parcel to be gone too. Except that was there. He wondered if she'd forgotten about it, or couldn't find it, or if it was just, the girl checking out, having it on her toes, she hadn't wanted to give them any reason to chase her.
That one gave Sleeps a pang, an empty feeling it took a chocolate malt and three cheeseburgers to fill again. So you're saying, it's a lack of ambition. Munching steadily, dribbling hot sauce onto the pink daisy, Sleeps realised he was going to have to meet Mel halfway.
So he filched a big guy's rucksack, the guy snoring on a bench behind the self-service restaurant, found a quiet restroom and dug in. Came out wearing baggy denims, a white tee under a v-necked short-sleeved blue shirt, navy Caterpillar trainers that pinched a little at the toes so Sleeps had to dump his socks. He bought a shaving kit at a restroom vending machine and scrubbed up, even laced some gel through his hair. Then sallied forth, heading first for the ferry's bar, and saw, soon as he stepped through the doors, Mel at the bar with Ray's arm around her shoulders, close enough to suck out Ray's fillings and not need a straw.
Sleeps let the door swing to, went back up on deck and made his way to the stern. Spent a while looking down into the ferry's wake, the black sea churning up greeny-white, the phosphorescence hypnotic. Sleeps tempted to dig into Johnny's parcel, do all the coke in one go. Fritz up his works with one lightning-bolt to the brain.
Sleeps squidging his bare toes in the new trainers with an empty ache inside a ton of cheeseburgers wouldn't fill.
Karen
Pyle put the carton of orange juice down on the bedside locker, the half-pint of vodka, two ham-and-cheese paninis, a jumbo bag of chips. Went in the bathroom and came out with the toothbrush glass. 'This guy Ray,' he said. 'You were saying he has an Elvis quiff, right? Only blonde.'
'Elvis '56,' Karen said through a mouthful of chips. 'Why?'
'He's upstairs in the bar.'
'Shit.'
'Draped around some girl,' Pyle said, pouring the vodka, 'looks a lot like Elvis '77.'
'There's a girl?'
'Woman enough for two,' Pyle said approvingly. He tossed off the vodka-orange, poured one for Karen. 'So what's this mean?' he said. 'We doping him too?'
Karen waved away the vodka-orange. 'He isn't chasing me,' she said. 'He's got no reason.'
'Hell of a coincidence, him just turning up like that. I mean, there's a lot of ferries leave the Piraeus every day. And he just happens to be on the one you're on.'
'There was a girl with Rossi,' Karen said, 'coming off the ferry into Amsterdam, she looked built to model mosquito nets for four-poster beds.'
'Then that could be her, sure.'
'So what the fuck's Ray playing at?'
'Pat-a-cakes, it looked to me.' Pyle chugged another vodka-orange. He said, 'The guy left you most of the money, the .38 so you'd be safe. Why should he turn on you now?'
Karen went into her spiel, her experience with men. Starting with her father, who she'd forked in the chest and got put away. 'I had to bust my own jaw to convince them,' she said, thumbing just above her chin, the twist where the bone hadn't fused properly. 'Then I went to visit him and started screaming about how he'd been fucking me up the ass since I was a kid.'
Pyle winced.
Then, Karen went on, Rossi, the guy in more than he was out in the ten years she'd known him, a rogue loser gene in his DNA. And now Ray, who, there was a good chance, he'd been scheming with this cop Doyle behind Karen's back. Except, when the heat came on? Ray'd bolted. And was now, by the sounds of things, hanging out with Rossi's crew.
'What I'm saying,' she said, 'is if you stick with a guy long enough, he'll turn on you. Ray, it took him a whole week.'
Pyle sipped his vodka-orange. 'I've known you what, ten hours? Twelve?' Karen shrugged. 'In that time,' he said, 'you've done a bunk from this guy Rossi, then disarmed a cop, doped him to the eyeballs. All the while running around with a bag of cash you're saying you scammed from some insurance company, a .38 tucked in there too. A bona fide wolf in tow, with this cop, Doyle, possibly on your tail.'
'What's your point?' Karen said.
'You're not at any point wondering,' Pyle said, 'and I'm just asking here, just throwing it out, if maybe you're not a little high maintenance?'
Doyle
Doyle and Sparks wound up on a beach to watch the sun come up, a bonfire down to embers, crates of Amstel in the tide keeping cool. Some Aussie guy strumming a guitar, Crowded House songs, Doyle never could stand Crowded fucking House.
Sparks copped off around dawn, one of two Aussie guys, strapping, they played footy for the same team back home. On a gap year, working their way around Europe. Except Doyle'd lost interest when she learned her guy, Jamie, was just three months older than exactly half her age. The guys horsing around, asking Sparks if she'd thrown her knickers at John or Paul when the Beatles were still touring.
'They're just kids,' Doyle warned.
'Like, duh.' Sparks touching up her mascara in the compact mirror, putting Doyle in mind of a guy shovelling sand onto lava flow.
'I mean we're just their older woman story for when they get back home.'
Sparks packed away her stuff, put out her hand and shook Doyle's. 'Hi,' she said, 'I'm Miss Happy Ever-After.'
So Sparks'd headed off with Ron, linking his arm going up the beach, telling him how her favourite tae kwan do move was the old bassai dai with a yama tsuki combo, asking Ron if he'd ever saw a guy'd had his nose cartilage jammed up into his brain. Leaving Doyle behind, tired and cold. Sand in her skimpies. Doyle wondering if island life was all it was cracked up to be.
When Jamie, blonde dreads and an ironic tie-dyed Deadhead tee, ambled across and sat down, offering Doyle a joint, Doyle had a toke and then told him she was a cop working undercover. The guy thinking this was hilarious until Doyle dug in her bag and showed him the badge she shouldn't have been carrying, being suspended.
Three minutes later Doyle was alone with the joint, the bonfire and two crates of Amstel, no idea of where she was or how to make it back to the Katina.
So she smoked the joint slow, the first in a long time, and watched the sun slide up around the headland, the greens and violets burning off, the sea hardening to petrol-blue and then softening to azure. The headlands either side bright orange like new brick and dotted with dusty scrub. A fishing smack bumbling along way out to sea, its foamy wake a brilliant white. Doyle felt a long, long way from home.
The buzzing of her phone woke her up.
'Hey,' she said, untangling her tongue from the web some spider had built in her throat, the lesser-spotted musty sock spider. 'What's up?'
'You alright?'
'Fine, yeah. You still hanging out at Jamie's cradle?'
'It's crib, Doyle. Get with the programme.'
'I said cradle, I meant cradle.'
'Listen, where are you?'
'Still on the beach, I fell asleep.' Doyle dry-washed her face with her free hand, wondering if she should try to open her eyes sometime soon. 'What time is it?'
'Nearly nine. The reason I'm ringing, a ferry's just pulled in and a wolf got off.'
Doyle came awake fast. 'It's Karen?'
'Karen I've never seen. But there's a girl, yeah, she has this wolf on a chain leash. A guy with her looks like Johnny Depp's dad.'
'Ray,' Doyle said, 'looks nothing like Johnny Depp. More skinny Elvis, a quiff going on.'
'Okay, I see him now. Yep, he's the one the wolf's attacking.'
'Sparks? What's happening?'
'Ray's down. The big girl, she looks worried.'
The big girl? 'Where are you, Sparks?'
'The port. Place called Ios Burger, they do a nice Irish fry, three sausages, beans on top. Good coffee, too. So who'd you want me to follow, Karen or Ray?'
Melody
Ray said, 'Karen, meet Melody. Mel, Karen.'
'Charmed I'm sure,' Mel said.
Karen ignored the outstretched hand. 'Ray, Pyle. Pyle, Ray. Anna you probably remember.'
''Course. Hey, Anna.' Which was when Mel realised Ray was drunker than she'd believed, Ray hunkering down to pat Anna and getting a head-butt for his troubles that knocked him clean out of his unlaced trainers. Pyle helped him up. 'So this is Ios,' Ray said. 'I was expecting, I don't know, less wolves.'
'Although,' Karen said, 'I hear they have a big rat problem. So you should feel right at home.'
Ray leaned on Pyle's shoulder pulling on his left trainer, then the right. 'Is it the rats that're big,' he said, 'or that there's loads of 'em?'
'He told Rossi,' Mel said to Karen, 'you were going to Crete. When Rossi had a gun on him.'
It wasn't easy when she was already sweating, the sun like a laser clearing the village on top of the hill, but Karen did her best aiming a frosty eye at Mel.
'What I'm saying is,' Mel said, 'I thought he was a rat too.'
'Was the gun loaded?'
'No, but we didn't know that until after.'
'Cojones, man,' Pyle said. He held out a fist. Ray, at the second attempt, managed to touch knuckles, then staggered a little. Mel starting to realise Ray was sweating harder than he should be, the guy pale, pinching now at his eyes.
'This being the dude,' Pyle said, 'shot you in the arm?'
Ray closed his eyes. 'That was a fluke.'
'I wouldn't,' Pyle said, 'I was you, give him another opportunity. Three's the charm, man.'
Ray looked directly at Karen. 'Rossi won't be trying again,' he said.
It was the way he said it.
'Because,' Karen said, 'you sent him off to Crete.'
'The south coast,' Mel confirmed.
'In a box,' Ray said.
The ferry blew a long wail going out around the headland. Ray turned to watch it go and then his shoulders sagged and one knee went. He fell forward onto the other knee, half-twisting to protect his broken arm.
'I could do,' he said over his shoulder, 'with some hospital.' Then he pitched face-first into the dirt.
Madge
Terry, sprawled across the bed in a white towelling robe, sipping room-service coffee and watching a movie on his portable DVD player, asked Madge if she'd had a good morning.
'Not so's you'd notice,' Madge said, lighting one of Terry's cigarettes. 'The all-you-can-eat buffet is actually inedible. Then, sunrise up on the observation deck? You're observing nothing but fat asses, this scrum all pointing cameras at the sun coming up. I wouldn't have minded so much but they were all Japanese, from the Land of the Rising Sun. So I went for a swim and this guy came along, had that whole white socks under sandals thing going on, baggy shorts, he hunkers down on the edge of the pool flashing me some of his undercarriage. Wants to know if I want to play giant chess, except what he means is giant chest, he's about to topple over into my cleavage. On a rescue mission, maybe, taking the chance that's where his self-respect disappeared to.'
'I didn't know you played chess,' Terry said.
'We didn't make it to the chess. He's helping me out of the pool, I haul back harder than I should, he goes in over my head. This is the shallow end, mind. Comes down on top of this three-year-old wearing inflatable armbands, a little Donald Duck rubber ring. So now he's being treated for concussion and I'm banned from the pool.' She stubbed the cigarette. 'How's your movie?'
'Good, yeah.' He jerked a thumb at the phone. 'Listen, Karen rang. Says she's on Ios. If you want to swing by, pick up your cut, she'll be there a few days.'
'What'd you say?'
'I told her if you weren't game, I'd meet her myself.' He put the DVD player to one side. 'No offence, Madge, but --'
'How much would it cost to rent a helicopter?' Madge said.
Ray
Ray woke up to find Doyle standing beside his bed with some chubby girl had the contours, to Ray's mind, of a punctured beach-ball. Doyle wearing a short-sleeved 'FCUK FASHION' pink tee and short denim skirt, the chubby girl in a leopard-print bikini-top and sarong combo. He drank down most of a glass of water from the bedside locker and said, 'Y'know, Stephanie, in one way I'm kinda hoping you're not a hallucination.'
'The word you're looking for is vision. This is Sparks, by the way.'
'Hi, Ray.'
'Hey.' The ward a four-bed, Ray the only patient. Windows open, so he could hear seagulls, mopeds, someone somewhere playing The Stones, Paint It Black, the driving percussion, that snaky sitar. 'So, Stephanie --'
'Where's the money, Ray?'
'I don't have it.'
'I know, I checked.' Doyle held up the black hold-all that had held, the last Ray'd heard, thirty grand in bills. 'So where's the money?'
'Last I saw it,' he conceded with a shrug, 'Karen's bag, when she got off on Corfu.'
'Try again. We know she's on Ios.'
'Karen's here?'
'Ray? Sparks saw you on the dock, before you fainted.'
'Blacked out.'
'Whatever. Where is she now?'
'How would I know? I've been in a coma.'
'If you want, we can just sit here and wait 'til she comes back.'
'Okay by me. Will you read me a story? I mean, in case you get bored sitting there all week.' Ray waggled the empty glass. 'War and Peace if you can get it.'
Doyle poured him some water, saying, 'Why should I believe she isn't coming back?'
''Cos me and Karen, we're done. And anyway, Stephanie, if you're here on business you're out of your jurisdiction. If it's pleasure, you should relax.'
'How about I tell the local cops, as a professional courtesy, they're harbouring a wanted criminal, a snatch artist. What would that be, business or pleasure?'
'That'd be spite.'
'So you're saying, pleasure.'
'Pity I'm not hooked up to something. You could pull the plug or stand on my air-pipe. Cut out the middle-man.'
'Help me and you help yourself. Otherwise, I wash my hands.'
'You came a long way,' Ray said, 'just to wash your hands.'
Karen
Pyle warned Karen to stay abreast once they left the asphalt road or one of them'd be eating grit for a week. Pyle happy enough renting a scooter, a silver Vespa with red piping. Karen on a royal-blue Kawasaki scrambler, no way she was riding any toy bikes. Anna a little groggy from the pills but doing okay, loping awkwardly alongside.
They dipped first into a wide, shallow valley dotted with lemon trees, then turned off the asphalt road onto a rutted dust track angling up towards some mountain peaks. Karen waving Pyle down every ten minutes, stopping to give Anna water.
The third time, in the bend of a long U scored into the cliff face, Pyle cut his engine and took off his helmet, pointed back the way they'd come. Olive groves in the foreground, the village perched on the hill above the valley, a milky-blue haze to the horizon.
They smoked a cigarette between them, Anna prone and panting hard, tongue lolling. Cicadas zizz-zizzing from the scrub, the heat strong and dry. 'I can see why you might want to paint that,' Karen said. 'I mean, to catch all that in one frame, that'd be really something.'
'With landscapes it's not what you put in, it's what you leave out.' Pyle dragged hard on the Marlboro, handed it across. 'See,' he pointed from one end of the horizon to the other, 'there's enough there but not too much. Any less, or any more, it wouldn't work. What you have to do is decide how much it needs to make it work.'
'You're saying, leave out a mountain. Or the village.'
'Not exactly.' Pyle chewed the inside of his lip. 'I read this thing once, it blew me away.' He closed his eyes, concentrating, then opened them again. 'Okay, I can't remember the exact line. But, basically? If the universe'd been bigger or smaller by one part in a thousand billion the split-second after it started? It wouldn't have started.'
Karen tried to fit it all in but couldn't make it click. Then a fly buzzed her nose and Karen, brushing it away, saw it up close against the vast backdrop. 'Jesus,' she said, shivering despite the heat.
'Bearing in mind,' Pyle said, 'we're dealing with infinity here, that's a hell of a lot of shit to come out of a microscopic piece of whatever the fuck it was.'
'And you're looking to find this "it". When you paint.'
'Maybe not it, exactly. But yeah, something that gives the impression.'
'You don't make it easy on yourself, do you?'
'With the painting, no. Otherwise?' He grinned. 'I cut a lot of slack all round. What do you think, is Anna good to go yet?'
Ten minutes later they topped a ridge. The sign pointing to the right said 'Homer's Tomb' but Pyle waved Karen on through the left fork into a high-sided canyon that sloped down and away. The canyon gouged out of an orangey-red rock flecked with gold, the sides ridged like a grated cheese. When they made it through the canyon and out onto an escarpment, he pulled over. Karen took her helmet off and said, 'Oh, wow.'
Pouring water into her palm for Anna to lap at, she said, 'Jesus.'
Wondering how she was going to manage a sneaky pee, she said, 'How fucking glorious is that?'
Pyle nodded, criss-crossing the road trying to get a signal on his phone so he could let the hippy artist commune types know he was coming in. The escarpment dropped away sharply, opening out into a wide plain that looked to Karen like the end of the world. She'd never seen so much blue in her entire life, Karen trying to drink it all in but drowning in the perfect blend of sea and sky, the sun up there in the corner blazing away like a spoilt child trying to get her attention.
In the end Pyle sent a text. He lit a smoke and sat on a rock beside Karen's and said, 'You mind if I say something personal?'
'Depends what it is.'
'Leaving the guy behind like that? That was cold.'
'Who, Ray?' Karen sniffed. 'Ray's the kind that makes out.'
'Looks like it. Facing down this guy, what d'you call him, Rossi? The guy holding a rod on him?'
'He hadn't run out on us,' Karen said, tugging on Anna's ear, 'he wouldn't have had to face anyone down, rods or no rods.'
Karen, being honest, hating herself for it, was more worried about Rossi. Ray, okay, he'd been half-delirious in the port. Drunk, too. But Karen didn't like the sound of that Rossi-in-a-box crap he'd pulled. And then, what was frustrating, collapsing before she could quiz him on the details. Karen had to admit she didn't know Ray so well she could say for sure how he'd react in any and all situations, especially a one-on-one with the guy who'd put a bullet in him.
What she did know, realising it outside the ESY, smoking and looking across at the scooter rental place wondering if they had any proper bikes, was if she stayed to watch over Ray, made sure he recovered, then Ray would always have the whip hand, would know Karen'd come through no matter how many times he walked away, ran out.
'One strike and you're gone,' she said.
'This is what I'm saying. Cold.'
'Most people don't even get one, Pyle.' She felt a sharp twinge in her bowels. 'Listen, how much further?'
Pyle pointed down at a ranch-style jumble of whitewashed buildings on the plain half a mile from the sea, rows of blue boxes radiating out in semi-circles. 'Bout three clicks.'
'Think we could crack on?'
'You don't want to sneak up on these guys. They like their, uh, privacy. It's one of the rules, what they call commandments, no one turns up unannounced.'
'Sure, solitude, I get it. But Pyle, I kinda need a little privacy myself. Seriously.'
Pyle's phone beep-beeped. He checked the message. 'Okay, we're set.'
Karen winced straddling the Kawasaki. Bit down hard on her lower lip, kicked the bike to life. Then realised it was too late and jumped off again, stiff-legged it in behind a boulder.
Doyle
Doyle sat on the low stone wall across the way from the one-storey health clinic, the ESY, in the shade of a scrubby beach oak, the wall separating the road from the umbrella-dotted beach, the bodies glistening like new toffee. Doyle could see the Katina the other side of the horseshoe bay, shimmering now in the haze, a mirage promising sleep.
'How come,' Sparks said, prone on a sun lounger, the lounger angled so she faced Doyle, 'you didn't ask him about the big girl got off the ferry with him?'
Her toes aimed either side of Doyle, so Doyle couldn't help but notice Sparks had been in for a wax.
'Because this way,' Doyle said, 'he thinks we don't know about her.'
'What does that achieve?'
'Not one damn thing.'
'So why didn't you ask him?'
'Why didn't you ask him? You were there.'
'I thought you had a cunning plan.'
All Doyle'd had was an overwhelming urge to crawl between the crisp sheets of one of the ESY's spare beds. 'Next time,' she said, 'and until you hear otherwise, presume different.'
'That doctor wasn't much help,' Sparks observed.
'Someone came in to visit a patient of mine,' Doyle said, 'saying they were his friends, and then asked to see his passport? I'd be wondering why too.'
Sparks sat up, dipped her shades. 'You alright?'
'Just tired, Sparks. Hungover. I haven't slept right since Tuesday night.'
'And there was me thinking it was the shock of Ray saying he and Karen were done.'
'I'm going to bed,' Doyle said, standing up.
Sparks lay back on the lounger. 'I think I'll stake out the clinic for a while. See if Karen comes back. Or the big girl.'
'What I like best about you,' Doyle said, 'is how you're always volunteering for the dirty missions.'
'I wouldn't ask anyone to do anything,' Sparks said, sipping some banana daiquiri through a straw, 'I wouldn't do myself.'
Sleeps
Sleeps had watched Melody and Ray disembark, Mel lugging the Louis Vuitton, Ray with the busted arm in no shape to help out. Ray with a spazzy shuffle going on, like he was afraid to lift his feet, the world might fall away if he did.
Sleeps knew that feeling.
He tucked Johnny's parcel under his arm and clanged all the way up the metal steps to the top deck, along the gangway to where it narrowed running past the funnel belching sparks, the breeze whipping through. Not the smartest place in the world to snort coke, Sleeps conceded, although only if you were worried about some drifting away. Sleeps, planning a face-first into Johnny Priest's snow, Al in Scarface, wasn't too worried about what came after that.
So he got himself comfortable on a whitewashed slatted bench containing life-jackets, Johnny's parcel on his lap, noticing, contrary to what he would've believed were the safety regulations, that the lid of the box was tied down at its front corners by what appeared to be sneaker laces. This was when he felt his ass being kicked faintly, through the slatted bars of the bench.
Sleeps had a moment when he considered walking away, finding another bench. Except there came another kick, a muffled squawk.
He knelt down and peered through the slats and met a wildly staring eye, bloodshot. Beyond that, half-shadowed, Sleeps could make out the side of Rossi's head, a sticky mess of black-looking blood where the wolf-savaged ear used to be.
He said, 'Ray, right?'
'Dead man walking,' Rossi snarled.
Ray
'He's coming straight at me,' Ray said. 'Like, what am I meant to do, jump overboard? This being a scumbag,' he added, 'who's already shot me, three days ago.' He took a drag off his smoke. 'Fuck that, he got warned.'
'You sure you should be out of bed? That sun's pretty fierce.'
Ray dragged his sun lounger into the shade under the umbrella. 'You want the truth?' he said. 'I never shot down on anyone before. Never wanted to, never did.' Ray trying to work out if it was the drugs had him high or the adrenaline rush, seeping through now the shock had dissipated, Ray buzzing after his long sleep. He'd waited until the doctor clocked off and then went looking for his clothes, his valuables, the nurse reluctant to let him go but having no real choice in the matter, Ray demanding to see some form he could sign to absolve the clinic from responsibility. 'Anyway,' he said, 'I squeezed one off.'
'Except at this stage, you're saying, you're not sure if there's one up the spout.'
'You ever handled an Uzi?'
'I work the desk,' Sparks said. 'Me and guns, even allowing for the whole phallic thing, we just don't mix.'
Ray nodded. 'The joy with your Uzi,' he said, 'is it's so safe you can run around with one in the hole. Drop it, hit the fucker with a hammer, it still won't go off. So I'm presuming, without checking, there's a round ready to go.'
'You could've killed him.'
'Not unless he grew three feet in a split-second, and he was already ducking in low.'
'And no one heard the shot?'
Ray shrugged. 'I'd say loads of people heard it. Whether they knew it was a gunshot, though ... Most people, they hear a gun go off, they're hoping it's not what they think it is, y'know? Looking around for a back-firing van.' He scratched his nose. 'Anyway, I clonked him here,' Ray said, pointing above his ear, 'with the Uzi.'
Sparks grimaced. 'This the same ear the wolf ripped off?'
'I wasn't aiming for it. I just swung, one-handed, it was dumb luck I got him there. And I don't even know if he felt it, he went down that fast.'
'Don't tell me you chucked him overboard,' Sparks said. 'I'd have to testify under oath.'
'The Uzi went overboard. Rossi I dragged across to the bench.' Ray shook his head, remembering. 'Ever try to drag an unconscious man?'
'How else would I get 'em into my love-nest?' Sparks winked. 'So what then?'
'I stuck him in this box where they keep the life-savers.'
'And no one said boo.'
'There was no one around, we were early getting on the ferry.'
'Leaving him comfortable in there,' Sparks said, 'on top of all the life-savers.'
'I thought he'd enjoy the irony.'
'I know someone who'll get a bang out of it. Mind if I ring her again?'
'Work away. But if she's sleeping, she's sleeping.'
Sparks rang Doyle. Ray lit a fresh smoke and tried to decide, again, who was most likely to have swiped the thirty grand and his passport, Karen or Melody. When Sparks was finished leaving her message, he nodded across the road. 'And you're saying, the guys in the scooter rental gave Doyle nothing.'
'She was fed up, hungover. Only asked the once, where's the girl staying rented the blue Kawasaki, Karen King. The guy got pissy, he couldn't speak English, so she just walked out again.'
Ray smoked on. 'How d'you think she is?' he said.
Sparks shrugged. 'She looked happy enough to me. That guy she's with, he's cute for an older guy.'
'I mean Doyle. How's she making out?'
'Doyle?' Sparks shaded her eyes looking across. 'I don't know. She says she's tired but it's more than that.'
'Like how?'
'She's just not herself. Maybe, she was saying yesterday, it was the fright she got, being shot at. You were there when it happened, right?'
'Already shot.' Ray crushed his smoke in the sand. 'Listen, I'm grabbing a beer. Want another one of those?'
'Sure. Only make it a strawberry one this time. Banana's a fattening fruit.'
'You could do,' Ray said, getting up, 'with putting on a few pounds. There's nothing less sexy than too skinny.' He stepped over the low wall, crossed the road and went into the roadside bar, Baywatch, ordered an Amstel, a strawberry daiquiri. Then, while the guy went out back hunting fresh strawberries, Ray rolled down his sleeves and strolled next door to the scooter rental, slipping a credit card, the gold one, out of his wallet.
'Yassou,' he said. 'Kalimera.'
'Kalispera,' the middle-aged guy behind the counter said, smiling. 'How can I help for you?'
'Looking to rent a bike, something decent. For a week.'
'You have a driver license?'
'Sure.' Ray got out his wallet, laid the license beside the credit card. 'I was here last year,' he said, 'you won't remember, but you rented me a sweet blue Kawasaki. Any chance it's still around?'
'Ah, but no.' The guy copying out Ray's details, liver spots like a join-the-dots game on the crown of his bald head. 'This is not possible. This bike, she is rented.'
'That's a shame,' Ray said. 'The guy rent it for long?'
'A woman. She rent for one week also.'
'Maybe I'll see her around,' Ray said. 'Persuade her to swap.'
'Perhaps.' The guy bobbing his head. 'But where she stays, is not a very good place to see her.'
'Oh yeah? She's staying up in the village?'
The ice had melted in the daiquiri by the time Ray got back to the beach. Sparks said, 'Any joy with the rental guy?'
'Nope. Unhelpful bastards, aren't they?'
'Who's that, the Greeks or just men in general?'
'Miaow,' Ray said.
Karen
Up close the ranch-style building was more in the way of an old bus garage converted into a dormitory, the whitewash dulled pinkish from the orange dust. Pyle led the way through the double gates into a graveled courtyard with a round dry fountain in the middle, the high walls topped by dinky little battlements that got Karen thinking, again, maybe it was just her frame of mind, of the Alamo. A redbrick barbecue over in the corner built into a recess under an olive tree. Karen liked the look of the bleached-wood picnic tables.
The dorm was another matter. Twelve beds curtained off, not all of them taken. Pyle said Karen could rent one of the rooms built on if she wasn't cool with the set-up. So that's what Karen did, choosing a room for its balcony looking onto the courtyard, a view of the Aegean beyond the battlements, Karen seeing the sea as a vast moat, liking the notion. She'd never seen Anna as placid, and wondered if it was all the open space or just the girl hungover from too many pills.
Or, maybe, Pyle.
He had his feet up on the balcony wall, a beer on his midriff, saying how he used to be a Marine. Did a tour, still a kid, in the Vietnam conflict, this before he came to Greece. Semper Fi, he said, my skinny white ass.
'Was this guy, Sassoon,' Pyle said, 'fought in the trenches in World War One. A poet. Anyway, he got invalided out twice but he always went back. I'll give the guy guts, he had that. But one war was plenty for me.'
Saying how he'd seen Vietnamese melted at the side of the road. Actual human beings shrunk down to not much bigger than dogs. The sight bad enough without the smell.
A comforting rumble to his voice, Karen feeling safe for the first time in she couldn't remember how long, the commune being so remote. A guy, George, out on the road watching for strangers. She said, 'That George doesn't talk much, does he?'
'It's better when poets don't talk out loud.'
'He didn't look much like a poet.'
'The best ones don't.'
Karen grooving on the scene, people wandering aimless through the courtyard, stopping off at balconies to shoot the shit, gathering around the picnic tables. Beefheart filtering out from the dorm, Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles.
'Ray used to be in the Rangers,' she said. 'He said it was like the Marines.'
'Ray of the Rangers?'
They both got a bang out of that one. Pyle said, 'He's had training, yeah?'
'Until he got court-martialled out.'
'I'm guessing he's a good man in a tight spot.'
'When he's not running off, sure.'
Anna whining at the sound of Ray's name, raising her head to look around. Pyle chucked her under the chin.
'Pyle? No offence, but I have to ask. I mean, about the duffel.'
Pyle shrugged. 'We have writers, painters. George the poet. One guy, he's a fire-eater. Another one's putting together a symphony of shell sounds and seagulls. Not exactly your criminal mastermind types.'
'I know, but --'
'First off, no one knows what's in the duffel. Second, Anna. Third, one of the commandments, it's actually a commandment, the Biblical kind. You finished with that?'
Karen sloshed around the inch or two of beer in her bottle. 'Just about.'
Pyle got up, went inside. Karen tapped along to a new Beefheart number and then realised it wasn't Beefheart, it was Elvis Costello, a tune Karen didn't recognise. She put her feet up on the balcony wall and tried to figure out how to play Pyle.
Karen wondering, again, if it all mightn't be a whole lot simpler if she was older, didn't need that buzz she got from Ray, Christ, even Rossi -- how they let her feel it was okay, just once in a while, to get animal, forget everything except the right here and now.
He came back out with two bottles and a saucer, poured some of his beer for Anna and set it down in front of her. Anna sniffing, curious, then lapping at it cautiously.
'None of them,' he said.
'Excuse me?'
'You asked, on the train, how many of them offered to buy their way in.' He reached across, clinked his bottle against Karen's. 'I'm saying, none of them did.'
Melody
Mel went Spartan for accommodation, low-key, no sense in drawing attention, but was still a little disappointed to realise the wardrobe in her room was, she hated to admit, just a smidge narrower than she was herself.
She sat at the table out on the balcony overlooking the port and opened the notebook, time to recap. Except the glare of the setting sun on the blank pages reminded her of Ray, so drained he was a jaundice stain on the crisp white sheets. Mel suffering, along with the usual heartburn she got in the evening, pangs of guilt, and feeling a little crampy now from nerves.
Ray should be waking up any time now.
Mel hoped he'd get back on his feet and presume she'd hopped the next ferry out, the logical thing to do when you've ripped someone off for thirty grand, the guy flat-backed, unconscious with exhaustion. The doctor wanting to know how Ray'd busted his arm.
'Before my time,' Melody'd said. 'I met him on the ferry, thought he looked sickly. What d'you think, is it heat-stroke?'
Telling the doc Karen and Pyle were just off the ferry too, generously offering to help haul Ray out of the port around to the ESY. Mel dropping in a reference to Blanche DuBois, the kindness of strangers.
The doctor had nodded along, dubiously, then said Ray'd be okay once he got the other side of about two days sleep. Although, he'd be running some x-rays on the arm once Ray woke up, make sure it was healing right, wasn't part of the problem.
'Super,' Mel'd said. 'I'll drop by tomorrow, see how he's doing.'
The doctor quizzing her about travel insurance, stuff like that.
'No idea,' Melody'd said. 'Like I say, I just met the guy. All I know is his name's Ray and he looked poorly.' Mel arriving in the doctor's office via a visit to the restroom with Ray's hold-all , none too happy her panties were big enough to hold thirty grand in cash but thinking too she probably should be counting her blessings. She'd given the doctor the hold-all. 'You want to rummage around in there,' she'd said, 'maybe you'll come up with some details you need.'
Then left and dragged her bags around to the port. Hailed a taxi, directing the cabbie up the hill to the village. Looking out at the pubs and clubs they passed, Melody wondered which one was Johnny Priest's, where Rossi and Sleeps were supposed to drop off the coke. Asking herself, a direct question, if she had the audacity, she ever found out which bar was Johnny's, to just walk in and ask for the ten grand she was owed. Thrilling to the idea, the daring. Actual tingles, like some dark electricity, when she pictured it -- Jack, cool and roguish, an older guy, Judy with that big-girl style going on, Sophie Dahl packing heat and asking for the ten grand she was owed ...
Write what you know, they said. Every time, Mel shelling out good money to hear the same damn thing fifty different ways -- write what you know. Mel was always tempted to raise a hand, ask how that worked for ghost stories, or you wanted to write a movie about spacemen, aliens. What Melody mostly knew was how little she knew.
Until, okay, now.
The plan, if Ray was to catch her up, ask about the money, was to say she'd been keeping it safe for him, no sense in leaving all that cash lying around, a temptation.
As for Rossi and Sleeps, they tracked her down wanting to know where Johnny Priest's coke was at, Melody figured the same ploy would work there too.
Melody, in life as in writing, believed in the genius of simplicity.
Rossi
'So I says, "Ray, we can do a deal here."'
'How'd that go down?'
'I went down,' Rossi said. 'We're in parlay, yeah? But he whacks me with the Uzi anyway. Ow, Jesus. Go easy.'
This last to the nurse sewing the fresh wound. Which was at least a step up, Rossi conceded, from getting stitched by a vet.
'He had a go during a sit-down?' Sleeps said.
'This is what we're dealing with, Sleeps. A moral degenerate. Next thing I'm waking up in the box.' Rossi skipping how he'd thought he'd been buried alive, sliding past the bit where he'd had himself a quiet weep.
Rossi, in a bad week to start with, was having a long day. Shot at, knocked unconscious, dumped in an early grave, then jumping ship on Santorini, ferrying back the way they came, a couple of hours each way. Rossi traumatised by his experience and anxious to share. Except Sleeps was catatonic the whole time, only perking up when they made Ios.
'It gets worse,' Sleeps said. 'He's swiped Mel too.'
'Fuck Mel. Ow.'
'Please to sit still,' the nurse said.
'First off, I want that Uzi back,' Rossi said. 'You still have the mag, right?'
'You're the one had it. You must've left it in the van.'
'Crap.'
'Seriously, Rossi, I'm worried about Mel.'
'I give the girl six months, she'll be running the white slave trade out of Hong Kong.'
'Last I saw her,' Sleeps said morosely, 'she was with someone who'd shoot down on an unarmed man. The kind of degenerate, you called him, who'd whack someone during parlay.'
'Except,' Rossi said, 'she's more likely the one who swiped Ray. Jesus! Ow!'
The nurse staring at him, the needle poised. 'Your friend is Ray?' she said.
Karen
Karen reckoned the best thing, in case Pyle took any notions when he got back, the guy with a couple of beers on, was to be gone at the time. Pyle being smart enough, she was hoping, or experienced enough, to take the hint.
So she left Anna snoozing off her beer buzz and grabbed a sweater, the night turning chilly. Strolled out into the slivery-grey world beyond the walls, on down towards the shore along a tyre-marked track that wound through a grove of desiccated trees, Karen giving a wide berth to the little blue boxes Pyle'd told her were beehives. Ios honey, he said, being famous for its hint of oregano. Karen only realising then what it was she'd been smelling all day.
She strolled on, cicadas zizz-zizzing, lizards rustling in the dry scrub. A tinkle-tankle of goat-bells. Then heard a self-satisfied rumble and saw a faint plume of dust way off to her left, ghostly in the moonlight. Someone coming down off the escarpment, arriving late to the commune, a chainsaw juggler, maybe a seaweed sculptor. Pyle, okay, seemed to know what he was doing, talked a good game. But the rest were artists of the bullshit variety. One guy, eating vegetarian barbecue for Chrissakes, had told her with a straight face he was writing a ballet for trees.
She picked her way down a steep ravine, careful about slipping on the loose shale, maybe twisting an ankle, and got herself perched on a still-warm boulder overlooking a sheltered bay, a faint breeze funneling up the narrow channel to cool her face, the night plenty warm once you were moving. She lit a cigarette but mainly she inhaled the night, the quiet, the impression of comforting distance that went with looking out across a placid black sea. The cicadas, the whish-shushing waves, somehow part of the silence. The night damn near perfect except for the bee that'd tracked Karen all the way to the shore and was whining now somewhere up to her right, invisible in the dark.
Except then a boat rounded the near headland, its outboard motor buzzing, and angled down the channel.
Karen slid backwards off the boulder as a spotlight blazed, turning the cove bright as day.
Madge
'"Deliver Israel, O God, from all his tribulations,"' Madge said. 'It's from the Psalms. Psalms 24.'
'You wanted to call the kid Israel?'
Madge nodded. 'The nuns said to take something from the Bible. So, I'm handing him up, I figure the least I can do is give him a name that means something. Like a prayer, a blessing he'd carry all his life.'
'Nice thought,' Terry said. 'But for an Irish kid? You don't think you were setting him up for, y'know, all sorts of Christ-killer grief?'
'Don't sweat it,' Madge said. 'Frank got involved, Frank the fucking wannabe intellectual, the opera freak. A big fan of Rossini. Mainly,' she added, tapping ash, 'because of the Lone Ranger.'
'So you're saying neither of you was particularly worried about how the kid might fare in the playground.'
'I was seventeen, Terry, just after having a baby. I mean, this was about half-an-hour after being ripped open. Just trying to do the right thing.'
'And still trying now,' Terry said, 'even though the guy, you're saying, reckons you're wrong.'
Madge had seen Rossi on Santorini, Madge and Terry disembarked from the cruise ship and waiting to board the next ferry out, perched on their luggage while Terry sorted the tickets. Not recognising him at first, just idly scanning the faces of the milling crowd, then noticing the blood, some guy seriously pissed about something, waving his arms around, a big guy -- Sleeps, who'd been so good to Madge, gave her his jacket for a pillow the time she fainted up at the lake -- Sleeps nodding patiently while Rossi vented.
Fate, she reckoned. Surprising herself at how quietly she accepted it, all her effort taken up with suppressing the urge to go to him, take a cool cloth to his bloody face.
'He's in denial,' she said, Terry leaning back to order another couple of beers from the barman, Mr Baywatch. Madge's gaze riveted to the entrance of the health centre, Rossi'd been in there over an hour now. 'Like, he's been told all his life his mother was some slapper worked the canal, his father a pizza guy over from Sicily. This is what he's being told in the home. But he's the right age, Terry. The right name.'
'It's perfect,' Terry agreed. 'So perfect he steps in and snatches you right out from under Ray's nose. This Rossi being the reason,' he added, 'everything fucked up. Why you're right now a fugitive from justice.'
Madge thought about that. 'Maybe,' she said, the barman placing a tray with two beers, frosted glasses, on the table, 'if I hadn't dumped him all those years ago, he wouldn't have been just out of prison and so desperate for money he'd cut in on Ray and Karen. How's that sound?'
'Like you're still a fugitive from justice,' Terry said, sucking some froth off his upper lip, 'only this time it's natural justice.' He considered. 'Except sounding, to me, like you're thinking of turning the tables, going off to hunt down natural justice. Make it all well with Rossi again.'
'You could just as easily have said that,' Madge observed, 'without sneering.'
'All I'm saying is, you've got enough problems without --'
'If Rossi's here,' Madge said, 'then it's Karen he's after. The money she owes him.'
'And you're going to help him,' Terry said, 'nail Karen. This guy who shot Ray.'
'Ray seems to me like a guy who can see the bigger picture.'
'Ray thinks twice,' Terry admitted, 'for sure. It's one of his strong points. But asking him to go splits with a guy nearly killed him? That's a big ask.'
'Who said anything,' Madge said, peering into the gathering gloom at the ESY, 'about asking?'
Ray
Ray'd never ridden any bikes with a busted arm before and wouldn't be in any hurry to try it again, especially not at night along some dirt-track felt like he was cruising railway sleepers. Ray wondering if he should've listened to the doc, stayed between the sheets. And then, just as the worst was over, Ray coming down off the escarpment and crossing the plain towards the lights, some guy ambles out of this tumbledown cottage and plants himself in the middle of the track. Ray, he wasn't doing four miles a fortnight on account of the arm, would've run him down.
The guy motioned for Ray to switch off. Ray left the engine idling. 'Yassou,' he said.
'Yassou, friend.' The guy heavy, face like a mushroom pizza, these shoulders he'd swiped off some baby bear. Ray waited. The guy scratched his stubble, sweat-stains showing in the armpits of the rumpled shirt. 'Is there a problem?' Ray said.
'No problem.' Sounding harsh, maybe Nordic. 'You just took the wrong turn.'
'That's the commune down there, right? Where the hippies hang out.'
'That's private property.' No menace. If anything, the guy sounded bored.
'Okay. But I'm looking for a friend.'
'Aren't we all?'
'Sure. But --'
The guy jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'People come out here for peace and quiet. That's what they pay for.'
'What if I went down on tippy-toe?'
'What if you turned around, went back the way you came?'
'That way I wouldn't get to see my friend.'
'If you tell me where you're staying, I'll pass on a message.'
'I haven't got a place to stay yet.'
The guy shrugged.
'How about,' Ray said, 'you ring down ahead, see if she wants to talk.'
'No visitors, friend.'
'How about Pyle? He take calls?'
'Pyle?'
'Pyle, yeah, with the ponytail.'
'Why'd you want to talk to him?'
'Ask him after we're done. He wants you to know, he'll tell you.'
The guy thought it over. Then he reached in over the handlebars and turned the key, tugged it out and went inside. He came out with a phone, dialling up. Waited a moment or two, listening, then handed the phone to Ray.
'Pyle?'
'Who's this?'
'Ray.'
'Ray?' A beat, then, 'Fuck're you doing out of bed, man? You trying to kill yourself?'
'Just looking for Karen.'
'Same thing, right?' Pyle chuckling. 'Listen,' he said, 'she's not here right now, she must've gone for a walk. You want, I'll get her to buzz you when she gets back.'
'Appreciate it. Only I don't have a phone.'
'Where're you staying? She can call there.'
'I'm not staying anywhere yet. I couldn't just drop by, wait 'til she gets back?'
'No can do, buddy. Like George says, rules is rules. You'll get me kicked out. Court-martialled and shit.'
Ray grinned. 'She told you that, huh? She mention I was hung like a Shire horse?'
'A Percheron's what she said. Tell you what, man -- I'm busy here for another hour, then I'll come meet you, we'll grab a beer. You were really in the Rangers?'
'For a while, yeah.'
'Cool. And look, if Karen's back by then, I'll bring her along. How's that?'
'I kind of need to sneak up on Karen at the moment, Pyle.'
'I hear you. Still want to grab that beer?'
'Where?'
'There's a place called Baywatch, I shit you not, it's down on Ormos beach out back of the port. A little cantina operation. Might be they'll sort you out with a place to stay too. Ask for Kosta. Looks like a pirate, sounds like a tank in reverse.'
'An hour.'
'Thereabouts.'
Ray hung up, swapped the phone for the ignition key, kicked the bike to life and walked it around in a semi-circle. 'George,' he said, climbing aboard, 'it's been beautiful.'
'For you, maybe.'
Doyle
'All I'm saying,' Doyle said, 'is you shouldn't have accepted, not on my behalf.'
'I thought you'd have said yes.'
'Maybe I would've, maybe I wouldn't.'
'I would,' Sparks said.
'You did,' Doyle pointed out. 'Invited yourself, then turned up. On time, too.'
'If I hadn't,' Sparks said, 'you'd have no one to take it out on. Ray not showing, I mean.' She sucked up some spaghetti, dabbed her napkin into the corners of the mouth. 'Still no word from Niko?'
'Not since he left that message.' Niko saying he'd been delayed, he'd keep her posted. Short and a long way from sweet, the guy sounding seriously hacked off.
The restaurant starting to empty out now. Doyle watched one couple pay their bill and take their Metaxas across the road to the beach to sprawl on sun-loungers under the stars. The restaurant open-fronted, a cool breeze wafting in off the bay.
'Maybe he arrived,' Sparks said, 'saw you and left again. Expecting it to be me on my own.'
'And maybe he never planned on coming.'
'He said he would.'
'Ray's a liar. Compulsive.'
'He gave me his Scout's honour.' Sparks made the three-fingered salute. 'Dib-dib-dib.'
'He kidnaps people, Sparks. I mean, this is how he earns a living.'
'I thought you said he was retired.'
'I'm talking about his character. How lying, to Ray, comes second nature.' Doyle, despite taking a shower, lowering a couple of frizzies, was still lethargic after her eight-hour siesta.
Sparks slurped up some more pasta. 'You're just pissed because he left you in the lurch.'
'The lurch? He left me cuffed to Frank in the middle of the woods.'
'Some lurches,' Sparks said, 'being worse than others.'
'See, this is what's bugging me. You knew all this before you let him ride off.'
'Sure. But this was after he was asking about you.'
Doyle forked some moussaka around the plate. 'What'd he ask, exactly?'
'How you were, were you alright. Sounding concerned. Genuine.'
'Ray'd sound sincere reading a laundry list.'
'I know. What is it, his eyes?'
Doyle was in no mood to talk about Ray's eyes, his tigery hazel glints. 'He say anything about Karen?'
'I thought he was asking about Karen. When he was asking about you.'
'I mean, where she might be.'
'Nope. He tried the bike rental place too. No joy.'
'This is what told you.'
'Why should they tell him and not you?'
'Maybe he asked right.'
Sparks pointed at Doyle's moussaka with her fork. 'You want to change that? Something wrong?'
'It's fine. I'm just not hungry.'
Sparks closed one eye adding up. 'Let's see,' she said. 'No appetite. Symptoms of withdrawal. Irritability. Obsessive behaviour. Any nausea?'
'Leave it, Sparks.'
'Look at the facts. You're pregnant, in love or you've picked up cholera.'
'Maybe I just want to be left alone.'
'You and Dietrich. Another actress.'
'Mention Ray once more, Sparks, and I'm gone. Seriously.'
'Okay. You want dessert?'
'No thanks.'
'Me neither. Not really.'
Sparks had the chocolate fudge, Doyle a slice of strawberry cheesecake. Ray arrived in time for coffee. Sparks said, as Ray pulled up a seat, 'There's a rule for a good-looking guy, how he's never actually late, just running behind. You're not gorgeous enough to qualify.'
'Yeah,' he said. 'Sorry about that. I'm not staying, either.'
Looking straight at Doyle while he apologised. Doyle shrugged it off, letting him know, but doing it cool, she didn't expect any better.
'I have to meet a guy now,' he said, 'but just for a beer. How about a drink after? My treat.'
'Why don't you bring your friend here?' Sparks said. 'The treat'll be all mine.'
Doyle kept her eyes on Ray. 'Where?'
'I don't mind.' He nodded across the road. 'The beach?'
Sparks winced. 'You're not worried about friction burns?'
Karen
From behind the boulder Karen couldn't be sure what was in the bales being unloaded off the motorboat. But at getting on for midnight, on a deserted beach, Karen had a good idea they weren't trafficking Tupperware.
So she backed away, keeping the boulder between her and the beach. Aiming for the ravine, testing each stone before she put her full weight on it. Breathing shallow and fast, blood roaring in her ears.
Then heard a click like there's no other click, felt something solid and cold against the nape of her neck.
A hand on her shoulder, turning her around. Karen had time to notice three dark holes, one the snout of the gun, the other two being cavernous nostrils under a vulture-beak nose. The gun whipped back then came in fast again, lashing Karen across the face.
After that, all she saw was velvety black.
Ray
Pyle cracked a gag with the barman on his way down to where Ray was sitting on a stool at the corner of the L, then slid inside Ray so he was looking past him out onto the road, the beach beyond, the port away to the left.
'I'm hoping you're not on any medication, man. Booze 'n' pills, it's a bad mix.'
'Karen didn't make it?'
'Still haven't seen her. Can I freshen that?'
Ray stayed with rum-and-coke. Pyle had a Mythos in a frosted glass, chugging half in one go. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'I guess,' he said, amping up the southern-fried accent, 'this is where I ask if your intentions are honourable.'
'Towards Karen or the money?'
'The money's Karen's, man. They don't get separated.'
'I'm the one left the money with Karen. I know who's it is.'
'Cool. So why d'you want to see her?'
'Make sure she's okay.'
'She says she's okay.'
'Karen says a lot of things.'
'She says she hardly knows you. Or she only knows you ten days, something like that.'
'We've been through a lot.'
'She said that too.'
'This is what I'm talking about. Who knows what she's saying?'
Pyle drank off his beer. 'A woman doesn't change her mind once in a while, she's a transvestite.'
Ray called another round, leaving his credit card, not the gold one, on the bar. 'It's not the money,' he said. 'I don't need the money.'
'Says the man buying drinks on plastic.'
'Temporary cash-flow glitch. Money's not the issue. Although,' he said, the barman, Kostas, setting them up, 'I wouldn't mind getting my passport back.'
'She took your passport?'
'It was her or Melody.'
'How come?'
Ray wasn't sure. 'They both got reasons for wanting me gone, but one doesn't want me to leave.'
'You're betting it's Karen?'
'I don't gamble, Pyle.'
'So I hear.' He toasted Ray with the fresh beer. 'Karen mentioned the snatches, how you'd pull them off. Sounds like a neat trick.'
'I'm retired.'
'This is where I'm coming from. You're looking for a new challenge. Also, you're ex-Rangers.'
'Yes to the ex-Rangers. Thanks but no to the new challenge.'
Pyle sucked froth off his upper lip. 'You just haven't heard yet,' he said, 'how challenging it is.'
Sleeps
'We already came this way, Rossi.'
'Fuck.' Rossi, after an hour spent wandering around the village, the Chora, had a face like a burst ulcer. 'You sure?'
'From the other direction. That tree with the pink flowers? We already passed that coming down.'
The village a maze of alleyways, crazy-paved. Sleeps getting snow-blind from the whitewashed walls, the windows and doors trimmed in blue. Trekking up steps, ducking into tunnels, the alleys curving away around corners to intersect like so many rollercoaster rides. Sleeps resigned to, at some point, meeting himself coming back.
Rossi turned another corner and stopped dead. 'Shit -- is this the fucking square again?'
They found a space on a low wall circling a tree and had a couple of Singapore Slings to take the edge off. Rossi pinching out the crease in his strides, at this point dressed head-to-toe in Italian, a light suit, no socks, Gucci loafers for the finishing touch. Sleeps in beige Chino shorts and a white tee, XL, untucked.
'Why don't you just ring Johnny?' Sleeps said. 'Ask him to get his guy come meet us.'
'Amateur hour,' Rossi said. 'Giving 'em the giggles back in 'Dam.'
'You could play it like you were being cool,' Sleeps said. 'Taking no chances, a neutral venue, all this.'
'Making it sound like we don't trust Johnny.'
'I don't trust Johnny.'
'Because,' Rossi said, 'you never did serious time. Don't appreciate the bond between guys celled together. Besides, I been doing some research.'
'Research?' Sleeps said.
'Multi-tasking,' Rossi said. 'Like, how long have we been walking up and down the village?'
''Bout an hour, maybe more.'
Rossi nodding along. 'And I haven't once, not fuckin once, had even a whiff of a toke.'
'Maybe they do their smoking at home,' Sleeps said. 'Private-like, so's they don't, y'know, get nabbed by the cops.'
'You even seen a cop?'
'Not yet.'
'I rest my case.' Rossi lifting Johnny's parcel, putting it down again, to make his point. 'What I'm saying,' he said, 'is there's a niche here. You see it? Johnny's piping in coke, yeah?'
'Not if you believe Johnny. According to Johnny he's just doing this guy Jochem a favour.'
Rossi winked. 'This is Johnny's cover. Operating on a need-to-know basis.'
'So you're trusting him even though he doesn't trust you.'
'What're you spraffing about, man? He gave us the coke, didn't he?'
'Yeah, but --'
'Ask no questions, Sleeps, hear no lies. You ever move up, get to some place there's responsibility involved, you'll see that's how the big boys run it. Nudge-nudge, know what I mean?'
'Running it like a Monty Python sketch.'
'A what now?'
'Forget it.' Sleeps scanned the crowd that filtered out of the alleyways to mill around the village's main square like it was a vortex sucking them in, Sleeps still hoping Mel might wander by. The square fronted by four or five bars with tables outside, each bar with speakers blasting out different tunes, the effect being roughly that of Russian sopranos on a spin-dry cycle.
Everyone passed through the square at least once every night, the nurse'd said. The girl concerned for Ray, the guy out of bed too early, glad she'd met friends of his who might persuade him to take it easy, maybe come back in for a check-up. Telling them how the girl Melody had gone off alone, abandoning Ray in the bed, unconscious. This leaving Sleeps and Rossi to decide, once Rossi'd been patched up again, whether Mel had pulled a scam on Ray, or if Ray'd just worked a diversion, faking a black-out to let Mel get away first, then follow on, hook up with her later. Maybe, this being Rossi's conviction, with Karen behind it all, pulling strings.
'Business,' Rossi was saying, 'it's all about what they call identifying a niche, yeah? So I'm saying, Johnny looks after the coke end, maybe even your pills, gets the punters up and buzzed. Then we come in, take care of the chillin'.'
'The chillin'.'
'Perxactly. That way there's no conflict of interest. We kick a ten vig upstairs to Johnny, everyone gets well.'
'And where're we getting the smoke?' Sleeps said.
'First thing,' Rossi said, 'is we impress Johnny. Deliver this baby,' he patted the parcel, 'all ship-shape and brisket fashion. Then, we're on the in, we put together a proposal.'
'And go to work for Johnny.'
'For him? Fuck no. We come in equal partners, what they call pawning our resources.'
'What about FARCO?' Sleeps said. 'I thought you were going legit.'
'This is FARCO, Sleeps. You see what I'm saying? Johnny's helping us out, we're helping him ... I mean,' he said, 'FARCO was never going to be, like, a hundred per cent legit. You knew that, right?'
'I was kind of hoping,' Sleeps said, 'it might be mostly legit. Or partly.'
'We could do it that way,' Rossi said, sipping on his Sling. 'Like, we could wander around the village a little more until we find a magic door into another fuckin universe, where guys like me and you, came up in a home, had to hustle a little once in a while for cigarette money, we don't get the bum's rush every time we stand still. Y'know? A place where they say, hey, here's a guy needs a break, let's not break his balls this once, see how he works out. 'Stead of saying lookit this guy,' nodding now at a group of well-fed teens, all perfectly gelled hair and swagger, braying so loud they drowned out the Russian sopranos once in a while, 'this guy's who's had it sweet all his life, school and shit, guy's got money falling out of his hole, so let's give him more money, see if he can't wedge that up his hole and stop all the other money falling out. You see what I'm saying.'
'Except we got no resources to, um, pawn with Johnny.'
'The fuck're you talking about? We got ten grand coming from Johnny we hand over the snow. Then, we nail Karen, nab the loot, we're coming in with,' he shrugged, 'shit, whatever's fuckin left. But a hundred gees clear, minimum, or I'm selling Karen's kidneys. Plus,' he said, tapping the table with a dirty forefinger, 'the Uzi. I'm going nowhere without the cannon.'
'You think Karen's still here?'
'The nurse seen her go off on a bike with this other guy, the ponytail guy. So I'm guessing, yeah, she's around, no one rents a bike then brings it back and fucks off. And once we find Ray, we find Karen. So,' he said, drinking off the last of his Sling, 'tomorrow morning, bright and early, we're back at the ESY for when Ray comes around to see if his passport wasn't filed in the wrong place and shit, like the cute little nursey said.'
'You seriously think he'd give Karen up? I mean, the guy's been looking out for her all along, man. Why would he stop now?'
'He's got one arm, we got four. Do the math.'
'I told you already, Rossi, I don't do muscle. I'm a pacifist.'
Rossi crossed his eyes in frustration. 'Okay,' he said, 'so you're a spacifist. How's Ray s'posed to know that?'
'Mainly,' Sleeps said, 'because we didn't muscle him the last time, when we had the chance. And whatever happened to honour among thieves?'
Rossi pointed at his freshly bandaged ear. 'The man broke a parlay, he's gone rogue.' He stood, shot his cuffs, picked up the parcel. 'You ready?'
Sleeps nodded. 'Just one suggestion,' he said.
'What's that?'
'How about we just ask for directions?'
Doyle
'So this guy,' Doyle said, 'you won't tell me his name, wants you to snatch some guy.'
'About the height of it, yeah.'
'He notice you've a busted arm?'
'I'd imagine he was too polite to say.'
'I thought you'd retired.'
'I did,' Ray said. 'I am.'
'And you told him this.'
'Yep.'
'But he's still asking. I mean, this guy you've only met once, he's persistent.'
'I've met him twice. But yeah, he's offering top wedge.'
They were down on the beach opposite Doyle's place, the Katina, sprawled on loungers under an umbrella facing the port across the bay. The night still warm, stars sparkling, tiny waves nibbling the sand. Doyle thinking how it was all just one willing guy off perfectly romantic.
'He tell you why he wants this guy snatched?' she said.
'I didn't ask.'
'But you're thinking of doing it.'
Ray lit two cigarettes, passed one over. 'He said he liked Anna,' he said.
'Anna's a dote.'
'He likes her for a guard dog.'
'She'd do a damn fine job.'
'Except the only way Anna's doing guard dog for anyone else,' Ray said, 'is if Karen's out of the picture.'
'So you think it was a threat.'
'Maybe.'
'So it mightn't be a threat.'
'It's a threat,' Ray said.
Doyle starting to see it. 'You're not so worried about the threat,' she said, 'as who's making it. I mean, if it's this guy or Karen who's behind it, wanting you to think she's in trouble. Again.'
'Karen can be tricky,' Ray said. 'Y'know,' he said, 'one thing I like about you, a man can assume a lot straight off, just get to the point.'
'I thought you and Karen split,' Doyle said, wondering if Ray, with the compliments, telling her earlier how starlight was good for her eyes, she should think about becoming an astronaut, was working up to making a pass.
'We did,' he said. 'We are.'
'So how come you're still involved?'
Ray shrugged. 'If you're in, you're in.'
Doyle thought about that, then swung her legs off her lounger and crossed to Ray's, hunkered down and took his face in her hands and kissed him, long and luscious.
Ray, pressing his lips together, tasting her strawberry balm, watched her go back to her lounger. 'What was that for?' he said.
'Why's it have to be for something?'
'It generally is.'
'I'm on holiday. On a beach, with the moon up. A guy just sitting there.'
'A waste,' Ray said, 'not to smooch him.'
'You know what's a waste? You running around after Karen, she's trying to screw you.'
'You're not trying to screw me?'
'It's my job to screw you.'
'I thought you were on holiday.'
'The way you're retired, thinking of snatching someone.'
'I never said I was thinking of doing it. I'm just wondering why the guy wants it done.'
'Or why Karen wants it done.'
Ray made to sip some beer then decided against it, pressed his lips together again, snaked the tip of his tongue into the corner of his mouth.
'Try this,' Doyle said. 'I mean, as a theory. Say Karen has this guy screwing you over. What do you owe her?'
'If it's her that's behind it.'
'That's the theory. If it's her, what d'you owe her?'
'Nothing.'
'Okay. So why not play along?'
'What's that achieve?'
'We let Karen tie herself in knots. Then we add a little pink bow, hand her up.'
Ray grinned. 'You're serious.'
'It's self-defence, Ray. If she's screwing you.'
'We don't know she is. And even if she is, no.'
'No?'
'No.'
'What would it take,' Doyle said, 'for you to hand her up?'
'Karen has plenty to worry about right now. And the one thing she doesn't have to worry about is me ratting her out. So let's just leave it that way.'
'You're thinking I want Karen for my score. Bring her home, hand her up, close the case. But if I do that, you're going down with her.'
'The thought had occurred.'
'What if I'm asking you to make a gesture?'
'A gesture.'
'For me.'
'I owe you,' Ray said, 'about as much as I owe Karen.'
'You left me in the middle of a forest handcuffed to Frank. While you ran off with the loot and Karen.'
'Point taken. But you're asking too much.'
'A gesture's too much?'
'Depends on the gesture. You're asking me to Judas Karen.'
'Only because you're thinking she's doing the same to you.'
'Even if she was, two wrongs don't make a right.'
Doyle asked for another cigarette. Ray lit two from the butt of the old, handed one over. 'Noble's one thing, Ray. Blind stupidity's another.'
Ray mulled that one over, then said, 'You never had anyone wouldn't rat you out like that?'
'Other than family?'
'Family's family. Family don't count.'
'Then no, I've never had anyone wouldn't rat me out like that.'
Ray got up and went over to her lounger and sat down straddling it. Doyle pulled her knees up to her chest. Ray scooched up the lounger, put his beer down on the sand, leaned in with her knees against his chest. This time the kiss went on a little longer, a lot deeper.
'If I sent Karen over,' Ray said, tasting strawberry, 'then you'd always know I could do the same to you sometime.' Then ducked in again for another lingering smooch. Doyle felt that one in her toes. She pushed him back, got him upright again.
'What're you guaranteeing me here?' she said.
'There's no guarantees, Doyle. You get down into it, all the way down, down past the atoms into the quantum level? Everything, and I mean the whole damn universe, is based on probability and uncertainty.'
'A girl needs a bit more than lectures on quantum physics, Ray.'
'You'll laugh every day.'
'I'd settle for a pension plan.'
Ray sat back and reached for his beer, took a sip. Eyes on hers, he said, 'This gesture you're talking about. You have any joy yet with my name?'
'Nope.'
'What'd you try?'
Doyle went through the list: Raymond, Raphael, Rainier, Reynaldo, Raymundo, Rumpelstiltskin ...
Ray said, 'You didn't try Israel?'
'Israel?'
'It's Biblical,' he said.
Rossi
'Seriously, yeah. He's sitting in front of me right now.' The English guy, Roger, behind the desk on the phone to Johnny Priest. 'Yeah, Rossi Callaghan. Says he's half-Sicilian, half-Dirty Harry.'
Rossi winking at Sleeps. Roger saying, 'Why would I kid you about this? He's here, the other side of the desk. Looking for some ten grand he's owed.'
Rossi a little disappointed with the poky office over the Blue Orange, just enough room for a battered desk, a filing cabinet, an empty water-cooler. A mouse-trap in the corner by the skirting-board. Rossi'd been expecting something plusher for Johnny's Greek island hub.
Roger, a peroxide surfer-type wearing a t-shirt that read Everything Rhymes With Orange, said, 'I don't know. Ask him yourself.' Then handed Rossi the phone.
Rossi sat forward clearing his throat. 'How're they hanging, Johnny?'
'Rossi?'
'The one and only. What's new?'
'You made it?'
'Mission accomplished, man.'
'Yeah ... Any, y'know, trouble on the way?'
'I don't do trouble, Johnny.' Rossi poking a finger in his good ear. 'The right thing the simple way, man, that's how it gets done Rossi-style. Anyway, if you'll just authorise your man Roger here to kick free the ten grand, we'll be --'
'Hold up,' Johnny said. 'Roger there's just looking after the bar. Jochem's guy is on Crete, won't make it to Ios 'til tomorrow. Some problem, he said, with flights to Santorini.'
'Crap.'
'You on your own? Everyone make it?'
'No man left behind, Johnny. You know the drill.'
'Lemme talk to Sleeps.'
'Sleeps? How come?'
'I just wanna be sure everyone made it. That way I know there was no fuck-ups.'
'There was no fuck-ups. We're here, aren't we?'
'Lemme talk to Sleeps.'
Rossi, fuming, handed the phone to Sleeps, who said, 'What?'
He said, 'None of your fucking business.'
He said, 'Like I give a fuck.'
He said, 'You and whose army?'
Rossi snatched the phone back. 'Johnny? Don't mind him, he just gets antsy when he's tired. It's been a long trip.'
'Lemme talk to Mel, Rossi.'
'She's, ah, she's not here right now.'
'Where is she?'
'Back at the room. Minding the stuff.'
'What stuff?'
'The stuff. Luggage and shit.'
Static on the line. Then, 'Where're you staying?'
'Place in the village,' Rossi said, not willing to mention they hadn't sorted a place to stay yet, how unprofessional that'd sound.
'Whereabouts exactly?'
'I dunno, man. That village, there's no street-signs, it's a fuckin maze.'
'Okay, but what's it called?'
'Something Greek,' Rossi said. 'The name right now escapes me.'
Rossi listened to static. Then Johnny said, 'Come back tomorrow, Rossi. All three of you. I want to know there's been no fuck-ups. Say two-ish, Jochem's guy'll be there by then. Once he knows everything's kosher, he'll sort you out. Put Roger back on.'
Rossi handed Roger the phone. Roger listened, then said, 'No chance.'
He said, 'I pull beers and count the money.'
He said, 'Yeah, that's the way it is. And that's the way it's staying.'
Then he looked at the phone, shrugged and hung up. 'Sorry, boys. Johnny says I can't take the package.'
'Try and fuckin take it,' Rossi growled.
Roger looking puzzled. 'I just said, I'm not touching it.'
Sleeps said, 'Rossi? Let's roll.'
Downstairs the low-ceilinged bar looked like two living rooms with a wall put through. The walls roughly plastered, whitewashed. A pool table to the right of the door, a dart-board near the bar. A smattering of customers huddled in dark corners. A guy behind the bar, headphones on, wearing a t-shirt said 'Human Jukebox'. Don Henley's Boys of Summer a mellow hum with occasional kerrangs.
'I been in libraries had a better buzz,' Rossi said.
He bellied up to the bar and ordered two Singapore Slings from the cute Scottish girl wearing squarish specs, then asked for the darts. Drank off his Sling in one go, told the girl Johnny said they were on the house and walked out, pocketing the darts.
'See,' he said, as they strolled away down the narrow alleyway, the parcel tucked under his armpit, 'this is the kind of crap you don't get when you're an independent, unaffiliated. You see what I'm saying.'
Sleeps said, 'Rossi? I think we should take a look-see in the parcel.'
Madge
Anyone ever asked Madge about the twins she'd say they had hearts of gold. Meaning, hard and cold, buried miles down. So she figured, even if Rossi kept up his act, playing hard to get, she'd had plenty of practice digging.
'Here they come again,' Terry said, drinking off his beer, tucking a twenty under the glass. 'You ready?'
'Let's not just jump in there,' Madge said. 'He's like a half-wild cat, y'know?'
Madge and Terry at the front window of a restaurant that was, Madge was guessing, someone's front parlor in the off-season, the window looking out onto the alleyway, the Blue Orange across the way, the sign in blue and orange neon above a little window-seat, a low-linteled stable door with the upper half open. Rossi and Sleeps slouched away down the gentle incline towards the heart of the village, arguing. Rossi, Madge'd been surprised to notice, looked dapper, very business-like, in a suit and tie, nice shoes.
'I can appreciate,' Terry said, 'how you're worried about being rejected again. Can't be nice to be denied, it's your own flesh and blood. But if we don't stick tight to this guy, we'll lose him.' Terry impressed with Rossi's strategic thinking, the way he'd criss-crossed and double-backed earlier on, coming up through the village, Rossi covering the angles, watching for spotters, tails. 'The least we need to know,' he said, 'is where they're staying. We get that, we can relax. Maybe, tomorrow morning, touch base by phone first, break the ice easy. Set up a meet.'
They stayed well back winding down through the village, Sleeps' bulk hard to miss even if Rossi was swallowed up in the thronged streets. Madge blaming herself for Rossi's skinny frame.
'You think I'm crazy, don't you?' she said.
'Yep.'
'You can't see it?'
'Anyone giving away money's crazy to me,' Terry said. 'After that, you're asking if I can see the logic of a three-way split, Rossi and the twins, then yeah, I can see it. Although,' he said, 'you want to push the logic, it'd make even more sense to cut the twins out, they've had all the breaks so far. Rossi's had none. So he's got a lot of ground to make up.'
'Maybe I should give him half,' Madge said, 'let the girls split the rest.'
'I was Rossi,' Terry said, 'that'd sound just about right to me. Hold on, here we go.'
They watched Rossi and Sleeps disappear into a pension, the Poseidon, then took a seat on the low whitewashed wall overlooking a weed-choked parking lot, a floodlit basketball court at the other end. Twenty minutes later the pair reappeared, Rossi now with his shirt open at the neck, no tie. No sign, either, of the parcel he'd had tucked under his arm.
'C'mon,' Terry said, taking Madge by the hand and leading the way across the street, up the steps to the Poseidon's foyer.
A young guy, early twenties, was behind the desk watching football on a TV bracketed high in the corner over an archway. Terry said, 'Hey, how're you doing? You speak English?'
'Well enough,' the guy said. 'How can I help you?'
'We're supposed to be meeting up with some friends, a guy called Rossi Callaghan, he said he'd be staying here.'
'That's correct,' the guy said. A little too handsome, Madge decided, with a glossy sheen to his olive skin, thick black hair, dark and sullen eyes. 'They checked in half-an-hour ago. We serve breakfast only, so they've gone out to eat.'
'That's a pity,' Terry said. 'You mind if we leave a note?'
'Of course.'
'You got a pen, some paper?'
While the guy hunted up the necessaries, Madge whispered to Terry, 'You think we could stay here? I mean, we still need somewhere to stay, right?'
'If you're okay with that,' Terry said. 'You don't think it'd freak Rossi out.'
'I'll stay out of the way,' Madge said. 'Let you meet him, like an intermediary. It's a lot to ask, I know, but --'
'Not a problem,' Terry said. He said to the guy behind the desk, 'You got any rooms free? One with a balcony? A kind of suite vibe to it?'
'Certainly.'
'Great, we'll take it.' He held up a hundred folded in two between fore and middle fingers. 'One thing, though. We left our luggage down at the port, it's in --'
'Allow me,' the guy said, 'to take care of that.'
'Nice,' Terry said. 'I appreciate the gesture.' He tucked the hundred into his breast pocket. 'Now,' he said to Madge, picking up the pen, 'what is it you want to say in this note?'
Melody
The phone-book being in Greek, all the operators speaking Greek, it took Mel ages to get the right number. It didn't help that the phone-booth was a head-and-shoulders affair across the road from Sweet Irish Dreams beside a souvlaki vendor that had a generator buzzing, a transistor radio with a semi-hysterical football commentary dangling from a strut on an old leather dog-leash. Mel twitching every three seconds, glancing left and right, on the off-chance Ray might wander out from the hordes of drunken tourists flooding by, singing. One group so blitzed they were doing A Fairytale of New York, maggots and lousy faggots and bells ringing out for Christmas Day.
But she got through in the end, went straight into her spiel. How Rossi'd forgotten the name of the bar, was too embarrassed to ring himself and ask for directions. She'd had to sneak away so he wouldn't know she was calling.
'Is that a fact?'
'Rossi's really the shy type when you get to know him. As most Sicilians tend to be, I find. Don't you?'
'I don't know if I've ever met any. Italians, though, I wouldn't as a rule describe them as bashful.'
'You're so right. So where can we, um, find it?'
'It's getting late, Mel. You just relax there, kick back. If you do find the Orange, just get them to run you a tab, I'll fix it up when I get in. That's about noon or thereabouts, so I can take you to lunch first, then show you around.'
'Super. But I should warn you, there's a bit of a hitch with the ten grand.'
'A hitch?'
'See, I'm owed for the passports.'
'The passports.'
'The ones I got for Rossi and Sleeps. Like, they owe me ten grand. So now that I've got the, y'know, you really won't need to meet with them at all, really. Will you?'
'I don't suppose I do. Not really. It's still sealed, right?'
'Absolutely.'
'Okay. Can you meet me off the Santorini ferry, the hispeed? At noon.'
'Should I wear a carnation?' Mel said, being of the opinion, it was a philosophy she generally adhered to, there was no such thing as a wasted flirt.
'That's okay,' Johnny Priest said. 'I've got a good memory for faces.'
SUNDAY
Sleeps
'What's it say?' Rossi said, shovelling home a forkful of bacon.
Sleeps flattened the note with his elbow while maneuvering a slab of toast into his mouth. 'Dear Rossi,' he read, chewing. 'If you'd like to have a chat about some money you're owed, meet me for lunch at noon at Ali Baba's. Yours, an Admirer.' He swallowed the toast. 'There's also two x's on the end, I think they're kisses.'
'Ali fuckin Baba's?'
'What it says. Who d'you think it's from?'
'Johnny?' Rossi hazarded.
'Signing off with two kisses?' Sleeps said. 'Besides, we're already meeting his guy later on, back at the Orange.'
'So who?' Rossi said. 'It can't be Mel, she thinks we owe her.'
'And Mel,' Sleeps pointed out, 'wouldn't be going into print as a big admirer of yours.' He speared half a fried tomato, slotted it home. 'Karen? Looking a parlay?'
'Possible,' Rossi said. 'Maybe even a full, y'know, makey-up.'
'That'd explain the kisses, yeah.'
'What'd the guy on the desk say?'
'Other'n he's owed a hundred, not a whole lot.'
'Maybe it's Johnny's guy,' Rossi said, 'getting in early from Crete and keeping it in code. That make sense?'
'Maybe. Think Johnny had us tailed here?'
'You'd be disappointed,' Rossi said, 'a pro like Johnny, if he didn't.'
'So he's still not trusting us. While we're trusting him.'
'No way we're opening it, Sleeps. We do that, the ten grand goes bogey.'
'How's he even gonna know?' Sleeps said. 'Hey, you eating those eggs?'
Rossi passed his plate across. 'How about this?' he said. 'You're the one wants it open, so we say, there's any grief after, you're the one opened it. While I was asleep or some shit. You're a coke fiend, can't help yourself.'
'Hanging me out to dry,' Sleeps said, wiping a dribble of yolk off his chin, 'for looking out for your interests.'
'That's perxactly how it lies,' Rossi said. 'Your call.'
Seven minutes later they were staring at a hefty pile of Mel's skimpies, the package unwrapped on Sleeps' bed. Arriving at the consensus, that they were Mel's, via the guess that Johnny, he for some reason wanted to double-cross Jochem, or Rossi, he probably wouldn't have had a heap of what Rossi referred to as dwarves' ponchos lying around in Vatican Two. Rossi, outraged, went hunting out the darts, raving how he was planning to harpoon himself some beached whale right through the fuckin eyeball.
'No personals,' Sleeps said. He bundled together the delicates. 'Let's keep this one strictly business. The way Mel's playing it.'
Karen
Karen woke up with a head full of scrapy cellos. Skull pounding, a metallic taste in her mouth, stale and damp from sleeping in her clothes. Pyle perched on the edge of the bed, shaking her ankle. 'Hey,' he said. 'How're you feeling?'
'Not good.' She gave him her symptoms, Pyle nodding along.
'Concussion. Here.' He handed her a bottle of water, some pills. 'These'll help.'
The room was cool, the A/C humming. Doors and windows closed, so their slats threw fat shadow-ladders across the tiled floor. Karen sat up trying to ignore the bile bubbling in her gut and gulped down the pills, feeling the water filter through her body one parched cell at a time. 'Who found me?' she said.
'I did. You must've slipped off a rock, clonked your head.'
'I slipped off the rock on purpose. The clonking came after.'
'You fell?'
'You'd've fallen too, someone cracked you with a gun.'
Pyle frowned. 'A gun?'
'That cop from the Piraeus? He's here.'
'Shit.'
'There was a boat,' she said. 'They were unloading some bales, I couldn't see what they were.' Karen looking past Pyle, to where the khaki duffel was propped against the other bed. 'Then he just popped up with the gun, and bam.'
'Bastard.'
The room quiet apart from the A/C hum. No snuffling or deep-chested growls, no nails clickety-clicking on the white tiles. Karen stifled a yawn, wincing as her nose wrinkled. 'Where's Anna?' she said.
'Anna's fine. You worry about yourself for a change.'
Karen drank some more water. 'You worry about you,' she said. 'Start with how this guy found me, just happened to be here on the same beach at this place you told me we'd be safe.'
'You think I tipped him off?'
'It damn sure wasn't Anna.'
'If you think I had anything to do with that,' he gestured at her face, 'you're crazy.'
'Okay,' Karen said. 'But what I'm wondering is how come he found me.'
'I doubt he was even looking for you,' Pyle said. 'Just got lucky.'
'In all these islands? No one's that lucky.'
'Maybe it was you,' Pyle said, 'who just happened to be on the beach.'
'I don't follow.'
'It's a long story. C'mon, I'll tell you over breakfast. You think you could eat something?'
'No thanks.' Even the idea of food made her nauseous, the pain throbbing now from the bridge of her nose down the length of her upper jaw. 'How's it look?'
'Not good. I think he bust your nose. When you're ready to move I'll take you in for an x-ray, make sure there isn't a fracture of the actual skull.'
'I'm ready now.'
'The health centre doesn't open 'til noon.' He stood up. 'Anything else I can get you?'
'Just Anna.'
'Okay. I'll check back in a while, bring her along.'
She waited until he was gone, then crossed to the other bed and hunkered down beside the duffel, guts boiling up hot and greasy.
The money was there.
The .38 was gone.
She went in the bathroom and stared at the huge bruise on her forehead, the blackish swelling under both eyes. Then she purged the vomit, got undressed and stepped under the shower. The icy blast made her gasp but she couldn't shake the torpor. Realising the pills were kicking in, she toweled off and went back in the room to lock the door, except Pyle had already locked it. The window shutters rattled but were hooked on the outside.
Karen trudged through deep treacle to the bed and collapsed. She drifted off trying to remember if she'd brought the .38 along, the night before, just going for a stroll on the beach. Pretty sure she hadn't.
Doyle
Sparks was out on the balcony sunbathing topless, her breasts the bluey-white of halogen headlights. Doyle sat on the other lounger averting her eyes.
'Dirty stop-out,' Sparks said.
'He took a room down the hall. So I didn't really stop out as such.'
'And?'
'It's complicated.'
'When is it not?'
'He's thinking of doing another snatch.'
'Christ.' Sparks dipped her Mickey Mouse shades. 'You're serious?'
Doyle filched a cigarette from Sparks' deck.
'And you can't stop him,' Sparks said.
'I think he wants me to help.'
'Now that is complicated. I thought he was retired.'
'He is.' Doyle lit up, sucked hard on the smoke. 'But he thinks Karen's in trouble.'
'He wants you to help him save Karen?'
'Sort of, yeah.'
'He doesn't know much about women, does he?'
'Not much.'
'So what're you going to do?'
'Think about the little,' Doyle said, popping a smoke-ring, 'he does know.'
Ray
'If you gotta go, man, this is the place to be buried. Am I right?'
Ray looking out from Homer's Tomb to some islands nesting in the horizon's haze, the sea and sky a blue so huge it hurt his eyes trying to fit it all in. Off to his right a deep ravine wound down to the sea. Beyond that, some dry-stone buildings that might have been goat shelters or German pill-boxes from the war. Ray hearing sea-birds skee-yar, goat-bells clunking. A lone cicada like a one-stroke hyena.
'This is where it all started, man,' Pyle said. 'Gods and heroes, Troy in flames. What I like about Homer? Three thousand years of culture, kick-started by a guy who was blind.'
'There's caves in the Sahara,' Ray said, 'that have paintings go back to the Neolithic.'
'Oh yeah?' Pyle undid his red bandana, mopped his neck and throat. 'You like wall art?'
'Murals.'
'The Sistine Chapel, man. Am I right?' Pyle faking a left, throwing a right double-jab. 'So maybe you'll get it,' he said.
'Get what?'
Pyle waved back towards the commune, the white buildings shimmering in the heat-haze down on the plain. 'This guy, he's making what you might call a hostile takeover bid.'
'On a hippy commune?'
'Not us. The place. See that crack in the shoreline, looks like someone knocked out a chip with a hammer?' Ray nodded. 'It's a natural harbour,' Pyle said. 'A sheltered deep-water. So this guy's planning a hotel, the exclusive kind. Water-skiing, wind-surfing, scuba-diving, you name it. Then, for culture, he has Homer's Tomb on his doorstep. The Venetian castle just over at Paleokastro. Some nice pieces in the village, various eras, even some Ionic.'
'And you think a spooking'll put him off?'
'Depends on how he's spooked. I'm thinking about leaving him overnight in a room with Anna, see how he's talking next morning.'
'I just snatch them, Pyle. I don't do fantasies.'
'So Karen said. But Ray, I should tell you, Karen got clonked last night.'
'Clonked?'
'Some guy, she said, smacked her over the head with a gun.'
'Shit. She alright?'
'He bust her nose, man. I'm thinking, this guy might need some clonking himself.'
'Where was Anna?'
'Sleeping off a beer buzz. Karen went for a walk, ended up down at the cove. Then this guy comes out of nowhere, smacks her. Warning us off.'
'She see a doctor?'
'Right now she's sleeping. I'm bringing her in later to get some x-rays done, make sure there's nothing serious.'
'And this guy just strolled in past George.'
'Karen said they came in a boat.'
'They?'
'The guy's protected, Ray. I'm hearing rumours he's a coke guy from Amsterdam, looking to run a pipe-line into the islands.'
Ray grinned. 'You're serious?'
'Sure. Guy called Johnny Priest, he's well known in --'
'No, Pyle -- I mean you're serious about wanting me to snatch a guy fronted by muscle with guns.'
Pyle reached under his shirt, tugged a .38 from his belt, walnut grip. 'He's arriving today,' he said. 'Like for a sit-down? Last thing he'll be expecting is some hippy crew to be tooled up, put a gun in his face.'
'I'm a hippy now?'
'Honorary.'
Ray thought it over. 'Say you snatch this guy, spook him. What's to stop him coming back, next time with an army?'
'He's a businessman. So we present him with a better proposal.'
'What's that?'
'How it's better being a businessman than some dead asshole used to have an army. Maybe play some Russian roulette, teach him a little geography. How there's all these other islands that don't have wolves with hangovers.'
'Karen's sticking around?'
'What she says. Karen, you probably noticed, she doesn't take kindly to orders. And she reckons it's perfect out here for Anna.'
Ray lit a cigarette. 'Where'll I find this guy?'
'He's coming in at noon, the hispeed from Santorini. He owns a club up in the village, the Blue Orange, you'll need to hit him before he gets there. Get tight in the crowd, stick the gun in his ribs.'
'Whoa. I'll have a look at it, see if it can be done. If it looks okay, then maybe.'
'Karen's nose isn't maybe busted, Ray. It's busted.'
Ray thought about that. 'This guy's moron enough to walk off the ferry with no muscle around, you won't need me. He's smart enough to bring muscle, they're tooled, there's fuck-all I can do.'
'I'm telling you, man, he's expecting acid-fried hippies. He won't be packing.'
'Says the acid-fried hippy.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'I'm not hearing you volunteer for back-up, Pyle. Not even volunteering George, anyone else looks like they might be useful.'
'We get seen, man, the guy'll know something's rotten in Denmark.'
Ray thought it over finishing his smoke. 'What I'm feeling,' he said, crushing the butt dead in the reddish dust, 'is there's way too many variables. But I'll have a look, see this guy off the ferry. You keep Karen on at the ESY after she gets her x-rays, I need to drop around there anyway. You don't see me by twelve-thirty, it means it was do-able, he's taken.'
'Sweet.'
'But it probably won't be. And it might be better, this guy's coming in for a sit-down anyway, to hold off, do him somewhere you can scope out first, cut down on the what-ifs.'
'Uh-huh.'
'Meanwhile,' Ray said, 'you might want to start drumming up a few volunteers. Starting with you.'
Pyle didn't like the insinuation. 'What d'you think this is for?' he said, holding up the .38. 'An ornament?'
'We've all got balls,' Ray said. 'Using them, that's a different matter.'
'I've been to 'Nam, Ray. Where you been?'
''Nam, huh?'
'Damn straight.'
'Drafted, right?'
'Straight outta school.'
'This is what I'm saying,' Ray said, 'about volunteering. Making a choice, not letting the choice make you.'
Melody
'Say some guys owed you ten grand,' Mel said to the skinny waitress as she placed a latte on the table, 'and you had a chance to get it back. Would you take it?'
'What would I have to do?' the waitress said. Jade, by her name-tag.
'Meet with a friend of theirs who says he'll honour the debt.'
'And that's it?'
'That's it.'
'You're sure?'
'That's what this guy says.'
'Then I'd meet him. Ten grand is ten grand.'
'It is, isn't it?'
'Absolutely. Can I get you something to eat with that?'
'That's fine, thanks. I'm being taken to lunch.'
'Lucky you.'
Melody watching the hispeed ferry make a long turn around the headland and roar in towards the near dock, foam churning as it slowed. She took a twenty out of her purse, held it up, then tucked it under the latte.
'Um, Jade? Mind if I ask you a favour?'
Rossi
'The guy doesn't give me what you might call an itinerary,' Roger said. 'Maybe the hispeed was late, how would I know?'
'It's unprofessional,' Rossi said, 'is what it is.'
'It can get choppy when there's a wind. And the hispeed doesn't sail in what they call adverse weather conditions.'
'A wind?' Rossi, wondering if black was really the way to go in the island, loosened the knot in his tie, opened the silk shirt a couple of buttons. He compared Roger's baggy shorts and sandals with his own suit and shoes, Rossi's bare toes swimming in sweat just sitting on a cane-weave chair at a three-legged metal table in the alleyway outside the Blue Orange, sipping a tall iced tea. Roger sweeping out and picking up litter. The air dead, stifling. 'There hasn't been a puff a breeze,' Rossi said, 'in three whole days. And you're talking about adverse fuckin conditions?'
Roger shrugged. 'No point giving me grief. All I do is --'
The tinny sound of We Are The Champions came muffled from Rossi's breast pocket. He dug out the cell phone. 'Sleeps? You see him?'
'Yeah. He just got off the boat.'
''Bout time. Okay, stick tight, see if he heads for Ali fuckin --'
'Rossi? He might be a while yet.'
'What's doing?'
'He's taking Mel to lunch.'
Rossi went cross-eyed trying to picture it. 'Mel's with Johnny P?'
'And, it looks like, some Greek-looking guy met Johnny off the ferry. The guy in from Crete, I'm guessing.'
'Christ. The girl can't help herself, can she? What're they saying?'
'I'm in a phone-box, Rossi. Because you wouldn't splash out for two cell phones.'
'Fuck. Okay, hold on there, I'm on my way down.'
Rossi hung up and said, 'Johnny's playing a dangerous game.'
Roger leaned on his broom. 'What's that, Naked Twister?'
Rossi rose above the sarcasm. 'First rule of business,' he said, 'is you take care your staff, your staff'll take care of you. And Johnny, it looks like, is taking care of staff, they're not even on the payroll.'
'You want to put a complaint in writing? Meet the union rep, maybe?'
'I don't get my ten grand,' Rossi said, 'just like that it goes up to twenty. What they call the double-bubble. You tell Johnny that. He wants to haggle, he knows where to find me.'
'Where's that?'
'The name escapes me right this second,' Rossi said with no little dignity. 'But it's the place his guy already found me.'
'Right you are.'
'You tell Johnny,' Rossi said, 'he's thinking of fuckin me around, I got a package with his mitts all over it.'
'And you've been carrying this package around,' Roger said, intrigued, 'coming from Amsterdam, using gloves all the way. Is that right?'
'Anything happens me,' Rossi went on, 'Johnny goes rogue, then my man's got strict instructions to take the package to the cops.'
Roger raised an eyebrow. 'So your guy'll go to the cops with a package that'll get Johnny in the shit. Putting himself,' he said, 'in the shit alongside Johnny.'
'Lemme ask you this one question, Roger.' Rossi drained the iced tea, stood up. 'How probable is it you'd take a hit, do time, for Johnny?'
'I couldn't say for certain,' Roger said, considering. 'Is there such a thing as a negative value for probable?'
'See,' Rossi said, 'what I got, what Johnny don't, is my guy'll do time for me. Guy's already put himself in the frame.'
'Your man wants to do time?'
'Perxactly.' He forked his fingers at Roger's eyes. 'You tell Johnny, he's dealing with Sicilians now.'
Madge
'Maybe,' Terry said, shading his eyes looking up at the sign, Ali Baba's, 'we should try saying ala-kazaam, some shit like that.'
'Now isn't the time for facetious,' Madge said.
'I asked the guy,' Terry said, 'the name of a restaurant, somewhere out of the way where it's good to eat. Presuming, okay, maybe I shouldn't, but presuming your average restaurant on a tourist island would be open for lunch. Who could've known?'
'Maybe you should have given him that tip you promised.'
'He jumped to the wrong conclusion. It's my fault he's greedy?'
Madge uncapped her water bottle and had a sip. 'What if Rossi was already here,' she said, 'found the place locked up and believed he was being taken for a ride?'
'The good news there,' Terry said, 'is it was an anonymous note. So he won't think it was you stringing him along.'
'What time is it now?'
'Ten past.'
'He might still arrive.'
'He's the smart type, Madge. He'd have got here early, casing the place. Making sure it was all kosher.'
'So what do we do now?'
'I'm thinking lunch, a siesta, another note at reception. This time signing it, so there's no confusion about who's admiring him from a distance.'
'And this time backing it up with an actual tip.'
Terry smiled at three tanned teens sashaying by in flip-flops, denim mini-skirts, all three combined wearing less than Madge. 'You want my advice?' he said, gazing after the trio, head bobbing in time to the rise and fall of their pert little butts. 'Put a number in the note. Mention this inheritance, three-quarters of a mill. Guy'll break your door down.'
'I don't want to make it sound like I'm trying to buy his love,' Madge said.
'I thought that was the plan.'
'Well, sure. I just don't want it to sound that way.'
'He starts to quibble, hears anything other than kerching,' Terry said with a wistful note as the trio disappeared around the corner, 'I'll round it up to the full mill myself.' He seemed to shake himself as he turned back to Madge. 'So what d'you fancy for lunch, seafood? I hear the fresh stuff, it's God's own Viagra.'
Karen
What woke Karen up was she rolled over in bed and there was nothing to stop her rolling, no Ray. Then she came fully awake, remembering there was no Ray anymore. She chugged some water, wondering where Anna was, and then her nose began to throb, a sharp pulsing that caused her to squint, her eyes to water. She went for the painkillers on the beside locker and then realised she was more worried about getting pills down her neck than asking where Anna was.
Karen, the idea filtering through slow, started to wonder if she hadn't spent the last twelve hours or so doped, Pyle for some reason keeping her knocked out.
A cold shower blasted her out of sluggish mode. She dressed and began banging on the locked door, then got up on the bed beside the window to karate-kick the shutters.
Feet scraped up the steps onto her porch. 'Cut that shit out now.'
'I'm starving,' Karen called. 'I haven't eaten since yesterday.'
'Okay, relax. I'll bring you a sandwich.'
'And coffee. Black, no sugar.'
'No problem. Just take it easy, okay?'
The feet scraped away down the steps. Karen, eyes watering again at the thought of it, glad she was still semi-doped, went in the bathroom and found the toilet-roll, put it in her mouth and bit down hard. Bent over the sink, grabbing a good hold of each side. Then, on three, she bounced her nose off the rim.
Ten minutes later the feet scraped back up onto the porch. 'Move away from the door.'
'I'm on the bed,' Karen shouted.
A key grated in the lock and the door pushed open. A stocky guy peered in, the crew-cut composing the ballet for trees, a tray in his hands. Then, seeing Karen on the bed, her face like badly pulped jam, the front of her t-shirt a sticky red mess, he swore and hurried across the room. Karen held off until he bent down to place the tray on the bedside locker, then twisted and scissor-kicked from the hip, booting the tray into his face.
Sandwich and coffee flew, mostly into the guy's face. He reared back, leaving himself wide open, allowing Karen to re-scissor and put her heel deep in his crotch. He groaned staggering backwards, then went down on one knee like someone about to leave church, genuflecting. Karen rolled off the bed, ducking down a little to jam the heel of her hand up into his nose. A dull crunch, the guy's head rocking. Karen took a half-step back and then booted him in the groin like she was kicking a field-goal from two counties over. He folded like he was hinged at the hips, emitting a keening whimper as he toppled onto his side.
Karen hunkered in and patted him down, came up with a snub-nose .32. Karen, okay, she didn't know too many ballet composers, but she was pretty sure carrying guns wasn't part of the job description. She crossed to the door and locked it, then checked to make sure the .32 was loaded. Went back to the groaning lump between the beds and clicked off the safety beside his ear.
'What's going on?' she said.
'Aauggggggh.'
'Where's Anna?'
'Graghhinogh.'
Karen put the safety on again and cracked him across the temple. His eyes rolled as he shrank away, vomiting something yellowy-green, his mouth gaping so wide Karen couldn't be sure she was seeing his tonsils or his balls.
'Vraghgoorickshun,' he mumbled. Then he passed out.
Karen, spritzed on adrenaline, cracked him another for luck, then tucked the .32 into the front of her jeans. Hoisted the duffel onto her shoulders, wriggling a little to allow its weight settle. Then paused to think it through.
She pulled out the .32 again, ran a fingertip across the sight on the end of the stubby barrel. Then pulled the sheet off the bed she hadn't used and went to work.
Melody
For a gangster, Mel decided, Johnny Priest was a very charming man. Sophisticated. Ordering for the three of them, choosing a crisp, fruity white to go with the seafood platter. Complimenting Mel on her outfit, Mel delighted that the fake Burberry deceived even Johnny's experienced eye. But most flattering of all was the way Johnny took her into his confidence, leaning in now across the table to lay the tips of his fingers on the back of her wrist.
'What can you tell me about our friend Rossi?' he said.
Given that Johnny was buying lunch at an upmarket restaurant facing onto the harbour, their table under a fringed awning catching a nice breeze, Mel believed he deserved a little value for his ten grand. 'What would you like to know?' she said, snaffling a shrimp.
'Who's he with?'
'Sleeps. Whose real name,' Mel added, 'is Gary.'
'Is that a fact?'
'He's narcoleptic, by the way.'
'Okay. But who's Rossi working for?'
'You,' Mel said. 'He's delivering the package from Amsterdam for Jochem. To, y'know, you.'
'Bullshit,' Niko said.
Mel was already irritated by the Greek's presence, not least because he sat with his head back scanning the port so Melody couldn't help but see up the hairy caverns of his nose while she nibbled her kalamari. 'Excuse me?' she said.
'See, we have reason to believe,' Johnny cut in, 'that Rossi is working with someone else. Maybe for, maybe with. She's got a wolf, that much we know.'
'Karen?' Mel shook her head. 'Karen and Rossi split way back. She's been through Ray since Rossi.'
'Ray?'
'Except Rossi isn't with Ray either, if that's what you're thinking. Ray sent Rossi to Crete in a box.'
'Is that a fact?'
'I can only tell you,' Mel said, spearing a prawn, 'what Ray told us.'
'Us?'
'Me. I mean, he told me and I'm telling you. Us.'
'Let's just go get the fucking thing,' Niko growled.
Johnny waved him off. 'See,' he said to Mel, 'what's worrying me about Rossi, the guy's hard to pin down. I mean, Jochem said Ios was where he wanted the package dropped off, but then Niko thought it might be better if Rossi handed off in Athens, cut out the messing around getting out here. Only Niko got, uh, intercepted by this Karen you're calling her. So now we're wondering if Rossi isn't pulling some scam.'
'Far as I know,' Mel said, 'he only ever wanted the ten grand you were paying. Which,' she added, 'is actually mine, for the passports.'
'Sure thing. Only Roger, Jochem's guy here on Ios, is telling me Rossi dropped by an hour ago, talking up twenty grand.'
'Rossi's here?'
'Saying,' Johnny nodded, 'if I didn't play ball, he'd get the fat guy --'
'Gary's chunky, not fat. More husky, I'd have said.'
'Sure thing. Anyway, Rossi says the big guy'll take a tumble for him, go back inside, if I'm not onside with the twenty.'
'More fucking bullshit,' Niko said.
'Actually,' Mel said, 'Gary says his life is for shit on the outside. So he's hoping Rossi'll screw up so bad he'll get to go to prison again.'
'Christ,' Niko said, 'that's all we need. A suicide bomber.'
'There's no chance of that,' Mel said. 'Like, just try and get Gary up on a whirly-chair, even.'
'What about Rossi?' Johnny said. 'He looking to go back in too?'
'God, no. Rossi's off to Sicily.'
'Sicily?'
'Where his family are from. Originally, I mean. Although Rossi,' she smirked, 'the last I heard, was under the impression he was already home.'
Johnny swore softly, glanced across at Niko. 'I knew it,' he said. 'The fucker's hooked up.'
'It was only a matter of time,' Niko said. He hawked and spat. 'Fucking mafia, they want every damn thing.' Then he stiffened, stared hawk-like across the port. 'Shit,' he said, getting up.
'Where're you off to?' Johnny said.
'Be back in a minute,' Niko said, striding away. Johnny, patting the back of his neck with a napkin, watched him go.
'Y'know, Johnny,' Mel said, 'I didn't want to say anything in front of Niko, but I think you've got bigger worries than Rossi.'
'How's that?'
'I'm wondering, how well do you know Jochem?'
'He's a guy I know. Why?'
'It's just ...' Mel hesitated, then plunged in. 'You know how he gave Rossi cocaine to bring to Ios?'
'Yeah?'
'Well, there was no cocaine in the package.'
Johnny groaned. 'He opened it? Rossi?'
'Rossi, yeah, he was the one opened it. Anyway, you'll never guess what he found.'
'Just taking a flyer at total random,' Johnny said, his eyes glazing over, 'I'd say it was a CZ Ninety-Nine, nine-millimetre parabellum. Recently fired, two rounds missing.'
'Jochem told you about it?'
'He, uh, yeah. That's why,' Johnny patting beads of sweat from his upper lip, 'Niko wanted to catch Rossi in Athens, let him know a mistake'd been made.'
Mel nodded. 'I presume Jochem'll be wanting it back then,' she said. 'A perfectly good gun like that.'
'I'd say he would,' Johnny said. 'Soon as possible.'
Mel snaffled another shrimp, dipped it into the garlic sauce. 'Because,' she said, 'missing bullets, and smelling the way it does, that nasty cordite whiff, I'd imagine it's hotter than Denzel Washington right now.'
Johnny, working on his goldfish impression, just stared. Mel popped the shrimp home.
'Could you do me just the tiniest little favour,' she said, chewing, 'and let Jochem know it'll cost him fifty grand to get it back? You do that,' she added, 'and I'll wipe out the original ten you owe me. Do we have a deal?'
Doyle
'You never told me,' Jade said, putting the diet Coke down, tucking the chit under the ashtray, 'you were a cop.'
'It's not something you advertise,' Doyle said. 'Especially on holiday.'
'That I can appreciate. But Jamie hasn't been seen for like two whole days. People're starting to worry.'
'Jamie being the asshole,' Doyle said, 'offered me a spliff on a public beach.' Doyle keeping her eyes on Ray's navy Punto, trying to guess which way he'd jump now the Amsterdam guy had Niko along. Doyle only now realising Niko was working undercover, stinging the Amsterdam guy, Johnny Priest. The sting being why Niko'd had to stay behind in Athens.
'That asshole, yeah,' Jade said. 'You didn't have him picked up?'
'Wasn't me.'
Jade shook her head, puzzled. She wiped listlessly at the table. 'You being on holiday, you're off-duty, right?'
'Actually, I'm suspended.'
'No shit. What'd you do?'
'Got shot at. Why, what's up?'
Jade glanced over her shoulder into the café, then sat down and hunched in. 'It's a weird one. This girl gave me a note earlier, asked me to go to the cops if she didn't come back in this afternoon.'
'Go on.'
'See, I'm illegal here since July. I go to the cops, there's any kind of fallout, I'll be on the next plane home.'
'What'd the note say?'
'I don't know, I didn't read it.'
Doyle hoisted an eyebrow.
'Okay,' Jade said, taking the note out of the front pocket of her apron. 'It says she's meeting a guy owns the Blue Orange up in the village. Says the cops should ask him where she is if she goes missing.'
'But you don't want to get involved.'
'Not if I don't have to. But I don't want this girl getting in any trouble either.'
'Noble. Where'd she say she was meeting this guy?'
'Over there.' Jade pointed across the port. 'The fish restaurant. See the big girl in the mustard sarong-and-pants combo?'
Doyle squinted against the glare trying to peer around the statue perched on the little marble roundabout. 'I can't see her right now,' she said, 'but she shouldn't be that hard to -- fuck.'
'What's wrong?'
'Give it ten minutes,' Doyle said, slipping the note into her pocket, 'then come out and say there's a call for me inside. Can you do that?'
'Why, what's wrong?'
'Let's just say I'm in no mood for a reunion,' Doyle said, raising a hand as Niko ducked in under the awning. 'Hey, Niko. You finally made it, huh?'
Ray
What Ray didn't like about the set-up would've taken Homer a whole new book to say. The bustling port. Melody. The way the restaurant was open-fronted. Ray, parked over where the yachts were moored, got the crawls just thinking about trying a getaway in the crowded harbour.
Then there was the muscle tagging along with Johnny Priest, both of them looking like businessmen, the only ones getting off the noon hispeed ferry, like Pyle'd said, wearing suits.
Against all that, Ray was intrigued by Mel's angle, curious as to what kind of scam she might be running on a big-time coke dealer. Ray'd swung by the ESY on his way down to the port, to check if they'd misfiled his passport and beg for some heavyweight painkillers, his arm starting to throb again. No joy both ways. Which meant he'd need to chat with Mel before she left the island, if only to eliminate her from his two-name list of suspects.
Still, Ray'd decided on non-intervention, had already started up the Punto rental, when the tall guy stood up and left the restaurant, stalked across the port to the café where Doyle was keeping sketch. Ray figured it was some kind of sign, karma. He switched off and got out, left the Punto unlocked. Crossing the port he diverted by the phone-box, tapped Sleeps on the shoulder.
'Don't do anything stupid, Gary,' he said. He tugged up the front of his shirt, showing Sleeps the walnut butt of the .38. 'Tell Rossi I'll see him later. We'll talk then, pro to pro.'
'Where?'
Ray glanced at the number on the phone-box. 'I'll ring you here, at eight.'
'Don't let anything happen Mel.'
Ray nodded. 'One last thing.'
'What's that?'
'The guy with Mel. He's Johnny Priest, right?'
Doyle
Doyle was wondering, with Johnny Priest wide open, what Ray was doing chatting with the fat guy at the phone-box. What was he waiting for, Doyle to jump Niko's bones right there in the café? Niko half-listening to Doyle's earthquake story, sitting sideways on, still scoping the port.
'So you're stinging this guy,' she said, to grab Niko's attention.
'What's that?'
'The Amsterdam guy, piping in coke. You're undercover, right?'
Niko's eyebrows did a caterpillar conga. 'Who told you that?'
'Oh,' Doyle said, 'a little birdie.'
'A birdie?'
'The birdie,' Doyle said, 'mentioned the Dutch connection, the coke. I was the one presumed you're undercover. Because the birdie seems to think, for some reason, you're Johnny's guy, his muscle.'
'Fuck. Who's this birdie?'
'Oh, a guy I met last night, we were in a bar. I didn't catch his name.'
'This bar, it wasn't the Orange, was it?'
'The, um, Orange. Yeah.'
'Shit,' Niko said. He shook his head, then glanced around, a sly half-grin starting. 'You know how long it's taken me to get to this point?' he said. 'I mean, for people to start believing I'm Johnny's guy in the islands? Three fucking years.'
'Wow,' Doyle said. Christ, Ray was heading this way now? 'That's pretty impressive.' Doyle using her eyes, Ray coming on, to warn him off.
But Ray kept coming. Doyle realising too late Ray didn't know Niko was a cop. Ray knowing nothing at all about Niko, as it happened, Doyle believing Ray'd be happier in his ignorance ...
It took Niko a beat or two to register that Ray'd slipped into the seat beside him. Not until Ray pulled the .38 under the table and leaned in, placed it against Niko's knee.
'Hollow points,' Ray said. 'They'll take half your fucking leg with them.'
Niko did a double-take, glancing at Doyle and then back to Ray. 'Who the fuck is this?' he said.
'Ever seen a man gut-shot?' Ray said.
Niko, mesmerised, shook his head. 'What happens,' Ray said, 'is the crap in your intestine gets in the wound. It's a horrible death. Takes days.'
'Fucking Sicilians,' Niko breathed.
'Stand up,' Ray told Niko.
Niko got to his feet slow.
'Nice and easy,' Ray said. 'The navy Punto, over by the yachts. Smile like you're having a good time.'
Niko's face cracked like a dropped plate.
Ray
'You don't know,' Niko said, 'who you're fucking with.'
'Save it for Karen,' Ray said.
'Karen?'
'This girl I know, just happened to have her nose busted last night.'
Niko blanched. 'Now wait a fucking --'
'Just drive,' Ray said.
Ray angled into the passenger seat, the gun on his lap pointed at Niko's thigh. The beach to their left, the Punto crawling along in second gear, Niko's knuckles white on the steering wheel. 'Where to?' he said.
'Keep going,' Ray said, 'all the way to the end. See the yellowy-blue sign, the Katina? There's a driveway to one side.'
Niko turned in onto a rutted track.
'Okay,' Ray said. 'Go down to the end, pull in under the pine.'
The village dead ahead on the top of the hill, looking snow-capped, mountains to the left dissolving into the shimmering interior.
'Now switch off,' Ray said.
Niko turned off the engine. Ray said, 'You're fucking with the wrong people, man. What'd you think, we'd just roll over? We look like Poland to you? Coming in here with a fucking army ...' Ray touched the barrel of the gun to Niko's thigh, Niko shying away to fetch up hard against the driver's door. 'Ever heard of the Romans?' Ray said. 'The Venetians?'
'And now it's the Sicilians' turn. I get it, yeah.'
'Sicilians,' Ray said, 'right.' He thought about that. 'You carrying?' he said.
Niko nodded.
'Take it out slow,' Ray holding up a forefinger, 'using just that.'
Niko, a little green around the gills, did as he was told.
'Okay,' Ray said, 'we're going inside. One fucking peep and you won't see the cavalry arrive. Kapiche?'
Sleeps
Sleeps watched the Punto crawl through the port and disappear out along the shore road, then rang Rossi.
'Sleeps?'
'It's me, yeah.'
'Thank fuck. I'm lost.'
'Shit. Where are you?'
'The fuck would I know? I'm lost.'
'Keep heading down. Let gravity do the work.'
'I'm trying, man. It's the Bermuda Triangle up here, I just saw Barry fuckin Manilow driving the Titanic ... What's happening down there?'
'Ray snatched Johnny's guy.'
'Jesus Willy Christ. Where's Johnny?'
'Over in the fish restaurant with Mel.'
'Any sign of our coke?'
'Johnny's coke. And no. But Ray says to sit tight, he'll ring later.'
'Ray's ringing us?'
'Yep.'
'You gave him my fuckin number?'
'Nope.' Sleeps sighed. 'He said he'd ring the phone-box.'
'What's he ringing for?'
'He wants to talk. Pro to pro.'
'About what?'
'He didn't say. But Rossi? He's tooled.'
'The Uzi?'
'Nope.'
'Fuckin Wyatt Earp this guy.'
'So we talk to him, right?'
Rossi mulling it over. 'Whaddya think, is he running a scam with Mel? On Johnny, like.'
'Let's just see,' Sleeps said,' what the guy has to say.'
'First off, we want Mel, the coke. That's non-negotiable.'
'Forget about the coke, Rossi.'
'You shitting me? That's twenty fucking grand's worth Johnny owes me.'
'Us,' Sleeps said, 'he owes us.' He said, 'It's twenty now?'
'Johnny's fucking us around, Sleeps. So I made what they call an executive decision, we're double-bubbling every four hours. And that's including, the guy doesn't get his fuckin skates on, while he's asleep.'
'Okay, but here's the thing. You said Ray'd know where Karen is.'
Static on the line while Rossi thought about that. 'So you're saying, two birds with one stone.'
'Go back to the Poseidon. I'll meet you there.'
'You think I didn't try?'
'Okay. Don't move, just sit down somewhere. I'll find you.'
'Make it fast. I'm getting looks up here from guys with wooden legs and three eyes. Fuckin Deliverance it is.'
Sleeps hung up and turned around to find Johnny Priest just standing there.
'Hey, Fuckface,' Johnny said.
A woman coming in behind Johnny, flipping a badge that glinted in the sun.
Sleeps felt his heart and stomach swap over.
Madge
Terry came back from the bathroom dry-washing his hands in anticipation as he ducked under the awning onto the terrace. He hung his jacket on the back of his chair and picked up the menu. 'See anything you like?' he said.
'Actually, I think I just saw a blonde Ray,' Madge said.
'Ray? Where?'
'Over there, past those yachts. Bundling a guy into a car.'
Terry, eyebrows halfway up his bald spot, peered through the throng of backpackers, port officials, the hawkers with their laminated signs. 'Bundling?'
'That's how it looked.'
'You're sure?'
'He was blonde, but his arm was in a plaster cast. And he still has the quiff.'
'Karen wasn't with him?'
'No. But that guy over there, in the phone-booth,' Madge pointed past the statue in the middle of the port, 'that's Sleeps.'
'Who's Sleeps?'
'Rossi's partner. He's the one treated me well up at the lake, after I fainted. Remember?'
Terry squinting into the glare of the noon sun. 'And that's Rossi, right? The guy about to floor Sleeps.'
'Him I've never seen before. But the girl beside him? That's Doyle, the cop I was telling you about, wanted to help with my alibi that day I shot Frank.'
'The Crazy Gang,' Terry said, 'all back together for one last reunion. What d'you think, should we send flowers?'
'Erm, excuse me?'
Madge looked up, shading her eyes. A large girl in a mustard sarong-and-pants combo was leaning forward from the next table along.
'Yes?' Madge said. 'Can we help you?'
'I couldn't help but overhear,' the girl said, 'you mentioning Rossi and Sleeps. You wouldn't happen to be friends of theirs, would you?'
Sleeps
'Where's who gone?' Sleeps said.
'Don't fuck with me, Biggie Smalls. Pull that Sicilian crap on me?' Johnny fuming. 'You don't even look Italian, man.'
'Who said I was?'
Johnny ducked in under the head-and-shoulders booth, crowding Sleeps, getting nose-to-nose. 'I won't ask again, Fat-Chops. Where'd they go?'
The stench of garlic caused Sleeps to rear back, but Johnny came on again. Sleeps couldn't resist. He faked another duck-back and then, as Johnny advanced, crashed his forehead into the unmissable target of the guy's Adam's apple.
Johnny croaked once and went down hard, gurgling gravel.
Sleeps glanced at the woman cop. She shrugged, flipped her badge closed.
'Thank Christ for that,' she said. ' I'm Doyle. Who the fuck're you?'
Doyle
'Which way did he go?' Johnny like a frog gakking up hairballs.
'Thataway,' Doyle said, waving vaguely in the direction of Africa. 'Johnny? I really think you should get that seen to.'
'How come you didn't grab him?'
'You were choking,' Doyle said, 'right there at my feet. It was chase him or take care of you. And Niko, he was explicit, my number one responsibility is you.'
Johnny, sullen, sipped a few drops of iced water, wincing as they slid down. 'So what do they want?'
'The guy said to wait, they'd be in touch. With,' Doyle freewheeled, 'their full list of, y'know, demands.'
'Fucking Sicilians,' Johnny croaked.
'They'll be in touch,' Doyle reassured him. 'So all we have to do is wait and --'
'That car was a rental,' Johnny said. 'I saw the sign in the back window, Kosmos Rentals. All we have to do now is find --'
'You think that's wise? I mean the guy said, wait 'til they --'
'XRY 379,' Johnny said. 'A navy Punto. They'll have the address, the details, of whoever rented it.'
'There's a rental place,' Doyle said, 'it's right there on the beach beside the health centre. So why don't we get you in there, just for a quick check-up. I'll scoot across to the rental place, see if they can --'
'Being brutally fucking honest,' Johnny said, getting up, 'right now I'm not really rating Niko's choice of back-up. So you got a lot to prove. And the best way to start is, do what you're fucking told.'
'Okay by me,' Doyle said. She reached across and grabbed Johnny's wrist, giving it a twisty little turn yanking him back down into the seat. Johnny, stunned, just gaped. 'My orders,' she said, 'coming from Niko, are to keep you out of harm's way. Incognito.'
'Yeah,' Johnny said, massaging his wrist, 'but I'm the one's telling Niko --'
'Being brutally fucking honest,' Doyle said, 'I'm not really rating Niko's choice of boss. So you got a lot to prove. And the best way to start is, shut the fuck up. And give me your phone.'
'My phone?'
'Triangulation,' Doyle said, describing a sloppy circle in the air with her forefinger. 'You start taking calls, they'll pin you down in seconds.'
'Who will?'
'The cops,' Doyle said. 'Niko didn't tell you?'
'Jesus, tell me what?'
'This sting they're running, undercover.'
'Fuck.' Johnny paled. 'Niko knows about this?'
'He does now.'
'That was the cops? Christ, I thought they were Sicilian.'
'They're still using that here?' Doyle, when you're in, you're in, was having a little fun with it. 'I'd have thought the Sicilian Feint was old hat by now.'
'You're saying, the cops are pretending to be Sicilians.'
'Sure. Unless it's the Reverse Sicilian Feint, when it's Sicilians pretending to be cops. It's rare, but it's a doozy.'
Johnny shaking his head, bewildered. 'So who told you?'
'This guy in the Orange, last night,' she riffed. 'Said if I was a friend of Niko's I should let him know the score, how there's been these guys sniffing around asking for you, he reckoned they were bacon. Said he was wondering why they were so blatant, just walking in off the street.'
It took a second for the penny to drop but it came down hard. 'Now wait a fucking minute,' Johnny said. 'He's saying I'm bacon? Those guys, I know them, they're doing me a favour for Chrissakes.' He sat back massaging his throat. 'Who told you this, Roger?'
'I didn't catch his name,' Doyle said. 'So these guys, you're vouching for them. I mean, you know them that well, they're cast-iron.'
Johnny thought about that. 'Shit,' he said. 'And I just set them up with some hot hardware.'
Doyle tut-tutted. 'That's what they call a schoolboy error, Johnny. Now give me your phone.'
Ray
Inside, in the room, Ray had Niko tear a sheet into strips then lie face-down on the bed, tie one of his wrists to the bed-post. Then he put a blanket over Niko's head and sat on that, got the other wrist secure. Checked the knots, then went out on the balcony and rang Pyle.
'I got him,' he said.
'Copafuckingcetic, man.'
'So what now?'
'There's an old Venetian castle the other side of the island, Paleokastro. I'll meet you up there at ten, it'll be good and dark. How's he looking?'
'Not so good. He thinks we're Sicilians.'
'Yeah?' A chuckle. 'How'd that happen?'
'I'm guessing Rossi.' Ray lit a cigarette. 'So, ten bells.'
'Watch the road, it's steep once you come off the main road, lots of s-bends. Come down slow. Flash your lights three times, then walk on up.'
'What happens if I only flash twice?'
'Why would you do that?'
'I'm the rebellious type. Put Karen on.'
'Right now she's out walking Anna, clearing her head.'
'Yeah? How'd those x-rays work out?'
'We haven't even been in yet, man. She was sleeping all morning.'
'Have her ring me when she gets back.'
'Will do.'
Ray hung up, then went through to the room and rang Mel.
'Ray?' The sound of utensils clinking on china in the background, a muted hum of conversation. 'Oh my God, Ray, you have no idea how glad I was to see you. I was just walking through the port when I was grabbed from behind, that horrible Niko. Then, when I wouldn't answer any of their --'
'Where's my passport, Mel?'
'Passport?'
'The money you can have. All I want is the passport.'
'But I don't have your passport.'
'No?'
'Why would I want your passport, Ray?'
'But you do have the money.'
Silence. Then, 'I have my money, if that's what you're --'
'It's not mine, Mel. If it was mine you could have it, and bon voyage. But it belongs to Karen,' Ray said, raising his voice, 'who I once saw feed a guy's foot to the wolf. So you see my predicament.'
'A hundred grand,' Niko shouted, his voice muffled from under the blanket. 'I can have it here tonight, in cash.'
'You can't put a price on fun, Niko,' Ray said. He said, 'Mel? You sit tight. Play ball and I'm guaranteeing you'll get whatever it is you want from Johnny. Fuck around and you'll be dealing with Karen. How's that sound?'
Melody
Mel came back to the table saying, 'Okay, Dad, thanks for calling. I'll see you soon.' Then hung up as she sat down. 'Sorry about that,' she simpered. 'He's always fussing. Where was I?'
'Johnny,' Madge said, 'had just spotted Ray getting Niko into the car.'
Mel nodding. 'I thought he'd explode. He was puce, his head swelling up.'
'This is when he goes running off,' Terry said.
'Telling me,' Mel said, 'to stay where I am, he'll be back in a minute.'
'Except then he spotted Sleeps,' Madge said.
'Not realising,' Mel said, 'your friend Doyle was watching Sleeps.'
'So,' Terry said, 'Ray has this Niko and Doyle has Johnny. And these guys, they're trying to nail Rossi with what they're calling a hot rod.'
'That's certainly the impression I got,' Mel said, who had left out one or two pieces of the jigsaw she didn't believe were immediately relevant.
'So where's Rossi in all this?' Madge said.
'That,' Mel had to admit, 'I don't know. Although Johnny said he was up at the Blue Orange bar earlier, telling Johnny's guy he wanted twenty grand. Doubling up what he's owed.'
'As if he knew all along,' Madge said, 'he was being double-crossed.'
'Crafty, this guy,' Terry said. 'Very, very crafty.'
Karen
From the porch, glancing down towards the sea as she locked her door, Karen could see stick-figures working at the blue beehives. Three, she thought, maybe four, shimmering in the afternoon heat. She strolled along the veranda towards Pyle's room, the courtyard deserted. Tapped on his door and heard, 'Christ, what is it now?'
She pushed on in. The room was the same shape as Karen's, a low desk where the second bed should have been. Pyle sitting at the desk where there was a radio transmitter with a large circular aerial on top. He swiveled when he heard the key turn, Karen locking the door.
'That's a big gun,' he drawled, taking off his headphones, 'for such a little lady.'
'Usually it's a Magnum .44,' Karen said, moving to the window to close the shutters.
'No shit.'
She crossed to the bathroom, poked her head in. 'Where's Anna?'
Pyle inclined his head. 'Out back. Why the rod?'
'You tell me.'
'Tell you what?'
'Where that cop came from. Why I was doped, locked up. Why there's some asshole with a gun bringing me lunch.'
Pyle held his hands up, palms out. 'It looks bad, I know, but it's for your own good. Seriously. Those guys that were here last night, the ones clonked you? We're expecting them back.'
'Pyle?' Karen waggled the .32. 'Trust me, you'll make a lot more sense with no holes in you.'
'Okay,' he said, getting up. 'Like I told --'
Karen cocked the hammer. 'Sit back down. Put your arms out like you're an airplane.' Pyle obeyed, a cheesy grin starting. 'Now go,' she said.
Pyle told her about the hostile takeover bid. Karen said, 'In that case, I'll be moving on. I got enough trouble.'
'If that's what you want. But Karen, these guys think you're with us now. They see you on your own ...'
Karen looked at the .32, then back at Pyle. 'If all your crew are as good as the guy I left in the room, I'd be safer playing with snakes. Kneel.'
'Can I put my arms down?'
'No. Lie on the floor.'
Karen waited until he was spread-eagled, then patted him down. 'Alright,' she said, satisfied, 'I want Anna and the bike.'
Pyle got slowly to his feet. 'I should probably mention,' he said, 'how Ray's helping out.'
'Ray?'
'He's just snatched the guy that's causing us problems.'
'Ray's retired, Pyle.'
'He thinks he's helping you. To stay here, I mean. You and Anna.'
'So if I run off, you lose Ray.'
'With you gone there's no reason for him to stick around.'
Karen considered. 'So this guy Ray has, he's tied in with the cop bust my nose?'
Pyle, hearing her tone, said, 'Yeah, but Karen, all we want is to spook him. And the guy's already spooked, thinks we're Sicilians.'
Karen groaned. 'Rossi, right?'
'Word is,' Pyle said, 'he's half-Sicilian, half-Crazy Larry.'
'He's half rat, half sick rat. A one-man fucking plague. Only you won't be needing Rossi. I'll spook this guy plenty.'
'Don't go into it emotional,' Pyle urged. 'An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.'
'An eye for an eye,' Karen said, thinking back to the time Rossi'd sprung Anna's eye, using a rusty fork to do it, 'leaves everyone keeping an eye on each other.'
Rossi
'And she just let you walk away?'
Rossi, thank Christ, finally back at base, the Poseidon, out on the balcony now overlooking the port below. His back hunched against the village, roaching a fat chillum, still shaky after wandering the maze. Sleeps slumped across the white plastic table, chin propped on his forearms.
'This so I could tell you,' Sleeps said, 'to quote-unquote, rev up and fuck off.' He flapped pudgy fingers at a bug buzzing his right ear. 'Else she'll extradite you back home for capping Frank's knee and have put you away for, I think, third-degree manslaughter.'
Rossi nearly jammed the roach up under his fingernail. 'Frank cowped?'
'What she says.'
'It was Madge,' Rossi fumed, 'pulled the trigger. Wasn't even my rod, it was Ray's, the Glock.'
'I'm only telling you,' Sleeps said, 'what she told me.'
'So that's,' Rossi counting them off, 'Madge, okay, she's putting me in the frame. Then Mel runs off with the coke. And now this Doyle, she's on my case too?' Rossi shook his head sadly. 'Fuckin Janes, man, they're devious bitches.'
'You're forgetting Karen.'
'Shit, yeah.'
'Except,' Sleeps pointed out, 'Johnny's fucking you too. And, it looks like, Ray.'
'Ray, to be fair,' Rossi conceded, grudging it, 'he's onside with Karen. The guy's just looking out for her, like you said.'
'Fair go. Only I got the feeling this Doyle was looking out for Ray.'
'Ray's a pro. No way he's hooked up with any cops.' Rossi sparked the doob, held the draw down. 'Here,' he said, exhaling slow, 'she flashed you her badge, right?'
Sleeps nodded. 'I said, "Aren't you out of your jurisdiction, officer?" She goes, "Put a tune to it, I'll sing along."'
'So what's she doing here?'
'Dunno. Looking the ransom money back?'
'Yeah. But is she, y'know, working freelance? Scooping the pot for herself?' Rossi handed the joint across. Sleeps waved it away. 'Fuck,' Rossi said, 'maybe Ray is hooked up with --'
There came a rat-a-tat-tat on the door.
'Christ,' Rossi said, 'who the fuck's that?'
'Go look see.'
'You go look see.'
In the end, the rat-a-tats getting louder, Sleeps went to the door. He came back out onto the balcony saying, 'It's the guy from downstairs, at reception. Has another note, except he got fifty for bringing it this far, wants another fifty to hand it over. Says it's what he was told to say.'
'You got a fifty on you?'
'Nope.'
'Fuck.' Rossi rifled his pockets, came up with twenty-three and change. 'See if that'll do it,' he said. 'He doesn't want to hand it over, get him to just read it out instead.'
Sleeps came back in with the note that looked to Rossi ripped from a posh notepad, the paper pale blue. 'What's it say?' Rossi said.
'My dear Rossi,' Sleeps read. 'That money you're owed is actually your inheritance, which is worth three-quarters of a million euro. I'll be at Ali Baba's this evening for dinner at nine o'clock if you'd like to talk about it. I checked, it'll definitely be open this time. Yours faithfully.'
Rossi boggled. 'Say what?' he whispered.
Sleeps read it out again.
'Three-quarters of a million?' Rossi said. 'A fuckin inheritance?'
'What it says,' Sleeps said.
'A grift,' Rossi said. 'Has to be. Some bastard setting me up.'
Sleeps thought about that. 'Well,' he said, 'it's not Doyle, she wants you gone. Same goes for Mel.'
'Karen?'
'You're the one chasing her. Why would she want a sit-down?'
'Like I said, a makey-up.'
'She came a thousand miles just to get away from you, Rossi. And now, you turn up, she has a change of heart?'
'So who? Johnny?'
'Not unless he's in cahoots with Doyle, who wants you gone.'
'Gimme that,' Rossi said. He scanned the note. 'Hey,' he said, 'there was a signature here. Right after it says, y'know, yours faithfully.'
'The guy,' Sleeps said, 'I gave him the twenty-three, he ripped the bottom of the note off and ate it. Said if we want to know who it's from, it'll cost us another twenty-seven.'
Rossi with the overwhelming urge to stab some fucker in the heart. 'So what do we do?' he said.
'We?'
'Yeah, we. What, you're bunking out on me now? Doing a Mel?'
'Not walking into a trap, Rossi, that's not bunking out. That's basic sanity.'
Rossi had a long toke wiggling a finger in his good ear. 'What're you saying?' he said.
'We wait for Ray to ring, see what he has to say. Take it from there.'
'Except Ray's hooked up with the cop.'
'On one side, yeah. On the other, Karen.'
'Plus he's got Johnny's guy.' Rossi thought about that, then frowned. 'So what's Ray want with us?'
'He had Johnny's guy,' Sleeps said, 'probably nothing. Except Ray thinks he has Johnny.'
'How come?'
'I didn't mention that?'
'Maybe you thought you mentioned it,' Rossi said, 'in some dream you had, on the nod again.'
'No personals,' Sleeps said. 'Like, how many times do we have to get into it?'
Rossi shook his head in despair. 'How's it help us,' he said, 'Ray holding Johnny's guy thinking he's Johnny?'
'Can't hurt us,' Sleeps said. He flapped lazily at another bug. 'And the way things're going, that's the only positive I can see. I mean, right now, we fell into a barrel of tits, we'd come out sucking our thumbs.'
'Look on the bright side,' Rossi groused. 'We keep going this way, you'll be back inside, doing soft time, before it gets dark again.'
'Actually,' Sleeps said, beckoning for the jay, then waving it around like a joss stick to ward off the bug, 'that's something I've been wanting to bring up.'
'Fuck, no.'
'See, the time in Croatia? I could've taken a dive then. Except the guy'd have taken you too, you with your pants down, I'm talking literally, taking a dump out in the scrub.'
'Appreciate it, yeah.'
'Then, with the cop earlier on? I could've just nutted her too, the way I did Johnny. Let her book me for common assault, some shit like that.'
'You nutted Johnny?'
'Guy was in my face, begging it. So I crunched the fucker.'
'But somehow neglected,' Rossi said, 'to Glasgow kiss the cop, she's just standing there.'
'A woman?' Sleeps shook his head. 'Anyway, things're different, man.'
'What? What's different?'
'Mel,' Sleeps confessed. 'I'm thinking I might give it a go, she ever sits still long enough I can put her a proposal, with Mel.'
'Mel? The bitch ripped us off, man, ran to Johnny Priest with the coke.'
'The girl's got her reasons.'
'There's what they call a saying, Sleeps. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I rip your head off and shit in the hole.'
'She's got her reasons,' Sleeps said, firm.
'She's got tar and feathers in the post is what she has.'
'I told you already, no one's slapping any women around on my watch.'
'Your watch?'
'Ray said he'd ring,' Sleeps said. 'So we wait, see what he has to say. Maybe, he's hooked up with Doyle, they'll put us in touch with Johnny. Maybe even Karen, for a parlay.'
Rossi stuck a finger in his good ear, dug around until he came up with a decent ball of wax. He went inside to the bathroom and wiped off, came back out onto the balcony saying, 'Hey, Sleeps? Y'think maybe ... shit.'
Sleeps with his head pillowed on his forearms, snoring gently. Rossi swore and reached across, plucked the joint from between Sleeps' fingers, smoked on.
The bug, persistent, finally settled on Sleeps' forehead. Rossi swore again, softly, then went back inside. Found the bug juice and brought it out, pumped it upward above Sleeps' head so the fine spray came down like a tiny-diamond rain.
Ray
The knock was a gentle tap-tap-tap but Ray on his feet and moving for the door at the second tap. He stood with his back to the wall, said: 'Vo ist das?'
'Ray?' A whisper. 'It's me, Sparks.'
Ray let her in, locked the door. Sparks put a finger to her lips, pointed towards the balcony.
'What's up?' Ray said, angling himself so he could see back into the room.
'Doyle said to say you got the wrong guy,' Sparks said. 'That's not Johnny.'
'Shit.'
'It gets worse. He's a cop undercover, running a sting on Johnny.'
'Bollocks.'
'You get a chance, maybe during pillow-talk,' Sparks said, 'you might do me a favour and remind Doyle she's a cop too.'
'What's she saying we should do?'
'She's not saying a lot, Ray. Johnny thinks Doyle's hooked up with Niko, so she's right now looking out for Johnny's interests.'
'How'd that happen?'
'Doyle,' Sparks said, 'has a way with men when she needs to be believed.'
'Oh yeah?'
'One thing she did say, she's not handing Niko over to this Pyle guy like you're planning. They find out he's a cop ...'
'Pyle wants Johnny. And we have Johnny.'
'Being precise about it, Doyle's the one has Johnny.'
'What's that mean?'
'It means, Ray, she's handing over Johnny to this Pyle guy so Karen skates out. Right?' Ray nodded. 'Except, when Doyle asked, just as a gesture, you wouldn't hand Karen up no-how.'
'That was different.'
'It was a gesture, Ray. All she was asking for was something she could hold on to. Now she has it, all nice and Johnny-shaped.'
'That's bullshit. Where is she?'
'She can't talk to you now, it's a delicate situation she's got with Johnny. And there's no way I'm watching over him for any lover's tiff. I'm still a cop.'
'You're saying she wants me to go up there and meet Pyle with no Johnny, no this guy Niko you're calling him, and no fucking back-up?'
'You don't have to go.'
'And just leave Karen hang out to dry?'
'What it all comes down to, I guess,' Sparks said, 'is Doyle's wondering who you're more worried about, her or Karen.'
Ray shook his head. He said, 'Say I don't go. What happens with Johnny and Niko?'
'Doyle didn't say. But if it was me, and I wasn't a cop? I'd have it on my toes, the nearest airport, flying off into the sunset. Cue the credits.'
'Only I can't go anywhere,' Ray said, 'until I get my passport back.'
'Your passport?'
'Yeah.'
'From who?'
'Karen.'
'Shit.'
'Exactly.'
'So what're you going to do?'
'You won't tell me what room Doyle's in?'
'No can do, Ray. Sorry.'
'That's okay, I can ring her. Although tell her, if it's not asking too much, I'd rather talk face-to-face.'
Leaving, Sparks turned outside the door. 'Ray?'
'What?'
'Break her heart and I break your face.'
Ray grinned. 'Some Kind of Wonderful, right?'
'You fucking better be.'
Rossi
No way was Rossi strolling down into the port to wait for some call mightn't come, get trapped like a mole in a bucket.
'They've seen me, Sleeps.' He gestured at the suit. 'These threads, they get you noticed. That's the whole fuckin point.'
'So I'm the one gets trapped like this mole.'
'The note,' Rossi said, brandishing the pale-blue paper, 'starts off "My dear Rossi," not "My dear Rossi and anyone else needs a nosebag." You see what I'm saying.'
'What you said was, the note's bad juju. A grift.'
'Y'think I'm just charging in there? I'll scope it out, see what's what.'
'Then, maybe this what works out as what, you scoop three-quarters of a million and bolt for Sicily, not stopping to rescue any moles in any buckets.'
That one hit Rossi where he lived. 'Y'think I'd scam you? Me, the guy's been fucked four ways by everyone except you, you being the guy who volunteered, okay, took it back after, but offered to do my time if things fucked up?' Rossi getting emotional. 'Last person I'm ever screwing over,' he said, 'is you. I mean, that halvesies deal we were on up to now, that's out the window, we're talking inheritance and shit here. But, it works out it's bona fide, I'm cutting you in for a slice. No man left behind, Sleeps.'
In the end they compromised on a disguise, swapping clothes, although Rossi had to keep the belt from the suit, when he put on Sleeps' baggy shorts they dropped to the floor without even grazing his knees. He'd had to keep the two-tone shoes too, Sleeps taking a size thirteen. Rossi believed he'd need a tent-pole, guy-ropes, he was ever to wear the suit again.
Now, though, wandering around the Chora -- the Whora, Sleeps called it, Rossi presuming it was on the basis the village fucked Rossi every time, no questions asked -- draped in Sleeps' toga of a t-shirt, a Daffy Duck baseball cap tugged down over the turban of bandage, kids stopping to stare, Rossi took comfort in knowing the cops'd never square him with the guy in the sharp Italian suit. As a disguise it was --
'Oh, Rossi? Over here. Coo-ee. Rossi?'
'Fuck.'
Mel waving from the doorway to Ali Baba's in these MC Hammer pants looked like she was planning a getaway on Ali's magic carpet. Rossi, conned again by Mel but carrying no shiv, the darts back in the room, guessed Mel'd heard about Johnny's guy getting took by Ray, Mel all of a sudden needing Rossi again, not knowing which way Johnny'd jump. Rossi with a sinking feeling strolling across to Ali Baba's, scaling down his expectations from three-quarters of a million to twenty grand. Which, he made a mental note, would be forty grand Johnny didn't get the finger out in the next hour or so.
Except then he walks in and follows Mel to the table and Madge is just sitting there, this smile on her like the Moany Lisa, letting Rossi know she knew something Rossi didn't. Rossi's brain going square trying out the math. Like, you get screwed over twice in the same thirty seconds, what's that, double-bubble-bubble?
'Hi, Rossi,' Madge said, her eyes bright. 'You're keeping well?'
Rossi was still trying to decide, one stitching him up for Frank, the other swiping his coke, who he was forking first in the eye, when the bald guy came back from the bathroom adjusting his cuffs, the guy slowing up when he caught sight of Rossi, appraising the threads as he came on.
'Nice,' he said. 'Blending in, I like it.' The guy now putting out his hand. 'The elusive Rossi, right? The Scarlet Pimpernel.'
Rossi eyed the outstretched hand. 'The fuck's this guy,' he asked Mel, 'comes in here calls me a pimp?'
'That's Terry,' Mel said. 'Terry Furlong.'
'Although you might know him better,' Madge said, 'as Terry Swipes.'
Sleeps
There was a queue when Sleeps got to the phone-box. Which in one way was good, he could blend in, just one more big guy in an Italian suit about six sizes too small, just waiting to call Mom, let her know he hadn't yet succumbed to alcohol poisoning or the clap, beg another loan to keep the party going.
Sleeps wondered what the protocol was, you were a gangster waiting at a call-box, there was a queue. Uh, 'scuse me, I gotta take this call from a snatch artist, you mind?
Except -- finally, a break -- just as the last of the kids hangs up, the phone rings.
'Ray?'
'Who'm I talking to?'
'It's me, Ray. Gary.'
'I was expecting Rossi.'
'Rossi's, uh, busy right now.'
'And that's why I'm talking to you?'
Sleeps, he was going to have to get into it at some point, said, 'You're talking to me now, Ray.'
'Not, you're saying, Rossi anymore.'
'You got a problem with that?'
'The problem I have right this second,' Ray said, 'is I got me a situation that needs another pair of eyes, a good head. A guy can handle himself.'
'And you were hoping for Rossi?'
'It was either Rossi,' Ray said, 'or some lummox who can't tell Johnny Priest from a Greek cop.'
Sleeps, his balls tingling, grinned. 'Guy's a cop?'
'Way I see it, Gary, you're the one put me where I need the extra pair of eyes. What d'you say?'
'I'll need, at some point, half-an-hour with Karen. A sit-down.'
'Where's Rossi for this sit-down?'
'In the corner, a pointy hat on his head.'
'I can't make you any promises, man. But I'll see what I can do.'
'Okay.'
'You're in?'
'Where'll I find you?'
'Stay on the line.'
Ten seconds later the navy Punto eased up to the phone-booth, Johnny's guy, the cop, driving. Ray in back nodding Sleeps on. Sleeps hung up, got in.
'The guy who unified Italy,' Ray said as Niko pulled off, 'was Garibaldi. You say it slow, it's Gary Baldy.'
'Except these days,' Sleeps said, 'people think he invented the biscuit.'
'What's that,' Johnny's guy said, 'some kind of Sicilian code?'
'You just drive,' Ray said.
Melody
Mel had seen her fair share of drama-rama, considered herself a connoisseur of the unexpected yelp or moan, the quivering declaration of undying love. But even Mel was a little shocked when Rossi dropped to one knee, took Johnny's hand and kissed the guy's signet ring.
Johnny a little embarrassed, heads turning in the restaurant. He cuffed Rossi gently on the side of the head, Rossi wincing, then hauled him upright, gesturing for him to take a seat beside Mel, across from Madge.
'I'm only here to ask you one favour,' Terry said. Rossi's eyes shining. 'Just hear Madge out, see what she has to say. Can you do me that one favour?'
So they ordered some more drinks, Mel wondering who this guy Terry was, exactly, and then Madge went into her spiel, how she was Rossi's mother, the inheritance coming due once Frank's affairs were sorted, the insurance cleared, Madge finishing up with, 'Terry has agreed to help me prove it, he made a call earlier on to some guy he knows in the Births and Deaths office back home. We can have your birth certificate here tomorrow morning, or a fax version of it.'
'Three quarters of a million,' Rossi said, an expression on his face like a duck staring at thunder.
'The twins get half,' Madge said, 'you get half. It's only fair.'
'Okay.' Rossi sipped on his Woo-Woo. 'Except what I'm hearing, the cop wants me for Frank. Third-degree manslaughter, Sleeps said.'
'But I was the one,' Madge said, 'shot Frank.'
'Might be the best way to play it,' Terry said. 'Rossi gets pinched for Frank, Madge sews up the insurance, Rossi gets his half.'
'I gotta do time for that ratbag?'
'Worst case scenario. You've done it before, right?'
'Sure, but --'
'Why not get Sleeps to do it?' Mel said, anxious to make a contribution, justify the finder's fee she reckoned she was due. 'The guy says he'll do your time for you, he's practically begging for a reason. So why not --'
'This guy's doing your time?' Johnny said. 'See, that's the kind of loyalty,' he told Madge, 'you just don't see anymore. Not like the old days.' He toasted Rossi with his Bellini.
Rossi, morose, clinked Johnny's glass with his Woo-Woo. 'He took it back,' he said. 'Guy's gone bofto for Mata Hari here. Reckons he's got a proposal for her, she ever quits fuckin him around, running off with other guys.'
'Really?' Mel said. 'That's sweet.'
'For you, maybe.'
'No,' Melody said, 'wait a minute. If Sleeps has a proposal for me, I say okay, I'll have a listen. Then, he says his piece, I'll have a proposal ready for him.'
'Like it's a Leap Year,' Terry said, 'for guys who want to go back inside.'
'Something like that, yeah,' Mel said.
'And this is because,' Rossi said, 'you're keen to make the Guinness Book of Records for being a backstabbing bitch. I mean, that'll be what, the third time you've fucked the guy? The bad fucked, like.'
'Sleeps is the one who wants to go to prison,' Mel said. 'I'm just helping him get there.'
'The guy wants you.'
'Yeah, well, that won't be happening.'
'Hey, Mel -- you're the one, maybe you haven't noticed, has to go running after other guys. Y'know? First you're hijacking me and Sleeps, then you're onto Ray. Two seconds later you're canoodling with Johnny Priest. Y'see what I'm saying? There's no guys running after you. Except Sleeps, the fat moron.'
'He's not fat, he's chunky.'
'Guy's the Pilbury fuckin Doughboy, Mel. And right now the fat fuck's down the port negotiating with Ray, putting himself on the line to get us back in touch with Johnny, mainly because you swiped Johnny's coke, ran off.'
'Easy, Rossi,' Terry said.
'Actually,' Mel said, wanting to get it out there while Terry was around, the guy for some reason a calming influence on Rossi, 'that's something I should probably mention. About the coke.'
'Do not,' Rossi said, 'tell me there's a problem with the coke.'
Melody cleared her throat. 'There's no actual problem with the coke,' she said, 'per se.'
Doyle
'You know guys, ' Sparks said, 'they think it's cool, they say they'll ring, to leave it two or three days. So you can both pretend they're not pussy-whipped from the start.'
Sparks sitting on the low wall dividing the balconies, Karen on her own balcony, smoking, watching the bathroom door of the room she'd rented specially to keep Johnny Priest stashed.
'I got a hostage in my bathroom,' Doyle said. 'Like, Ray's hostage. So you'd expect him to make like he was keen.'
'Even if he's not.'
'Don't complicate it, Sparks.'
'Me? Girlfriend, I'm not the one illegally detaining the big-time coke dealer from Amsterdam on account of this snatch artist I know fucked up, stole the wrong guy. This while I'm supposed to be a cop.'
'A suspended cop.'
'And you're thinking this is the best way to get your badge back?'
Doyle with a bad feeling. Not so much Ray and the little he knew about women, off rescuing Karen while Doyle sat home, barefoot and minding his fuck-up. Or even the way it might look if it all screwed up, Doyle holding Johnny Priest, the coke-dealer under the impression Doyle was his temporary muscle. No, what was bugging Doyle was how she was at the mercy of all these unknowns, Doyle with no control, a sitting duck. Christ, at this rate she might as well be back home, at the desk right next to the corridor led to the holding cells, just sitting there waiting for the next moron to drop a case-file on the desk, the latest dead fish to stink up the joint.
'I need to move,' she said. 'Do something.'
'Where're you going?' Sparks said. 'No way I'm watching Johnny, if that's what you think.'
'I'm not asking you to do anything.' Doyle stubbed the smoke, thinking. 'Actually,' she said, 'I might ask just one tiny favour.'
Sparks groaned.
'Just give it five minutes,' Doyle said, 'after you hear Johnny flush. Then ring me. That's all I'm asking. Can you do that much?'
'Doyle,' Sparks said, 'you know as well as I do I'm going to do anything you ask me. Because I know, it's a gut instinct, you won't ask anything'll put me in dutch. Right?'
'Just wait for the flush,' Doyle said. Thinking how, the mountain won't come to Mohammad, it mightn't be such a bad idea to dynamite the frickin mountain.
Ray
The Punto nosed up out of the village, the road snaking along the eastern flank of the shallow bowl valley behind. The sky in pain, flaming orangey-red, half-formed scabs of violet cloud above hills turning mauve as night came on. By the time they got down and across the valley floor, started climbing into the hills again, it was almost full dark.
Ray said, 'You need to get tooled, right?'
'I'm not carrying,' Sleeps said, 'if that's what you mean.'
Ray leaned forward, gave Sleeps a little key. 'The glove compartment. There's a map in there too, if you don't mind doing co-pilot.'
'No problem,' Sleeps said. He liberated the gun, Niko's Sig Sauer. 'What do I need to know?'
'I didn't have time to check if he had a round chambered,' Ray said. 'Rack the slide.'
Sleeps did it. 'Okay,' he said. 'Where's the safety?'
'No safety,' Ray said. 'There's a lever on the left, it de-cocks the hammer, leaves it there just off the firing pin. Yeah?'
'I see it.'
'What you've done, you've engaged the double-action pull, it's a bit stiffer but still okay. Keep a locked wrist you need to get one off, else it'll jam.'
'Wilco, Roger.'
Passing a village now, Pano Kambos, coming up on a fork in the road, a sign for Homer's Tomb in the headlights pointing off left. 'Where to?' Niko said, sullen.
'We're looking for Paleokastro,' Ray told Sleeps. 'You see it? Maybe a castle-shape on the map? I'm told Venetian.'
'It's here, yeah. Go right,' Sleeps told Niko. The road starting to climb steeply now, winding around short, tight bends.
'Hey, Gary?' Ray said. 'I don't by any chance suppose you know what Greek cops are carrying as standard these days.'
'Apart from bad breath, no idea.'
Niko stinking out the car with garlic. 'Think it might be a Sig?' Ray said. 'The P320, the kind you carry concealed, like in an ankle holster?'
'Could be.'
'But probably not.'
'This is what I'm thinking,' Sleeps said.
'So what's this Greek cop doing carrying a Sig?'
'Maybe he was off-duty.'
'Off-duty,' Ray said, 'and breaking bread with Johnny Priest.' He said, 'Niko? Feel free to jump in here, man, any time. Clear up a few details.'
Niko just grunted, his knuckles pale under the olive tan gripping the steering wheel. Sleeps said, 'Ray?'
'What?'
He pointed at the wing mirror. 'There's someone behind us. Since we turned off at that fork. Came down from Homer's Tomb direction, tucked in.'
'So?'
'So they're tucked in. Staying back, two or three bends behind. Apart from our friend here, he's under specific orders, how many Greeks have you seen with that kind of patience?'
'Not many on the road,' Ray said.
'Greeks,' Sleeps told Niko, 'have a lot of virtues, don't get me wrong. But patience isn't one of them.'
Niko, first time, took his eyes off the road. 'I'll wait for you,' he said. 'I'll do you last and slow.'
Ray sat forward, laid the barrel of the .38 alongside Niko's neck. 'Take the next turn-off,' he said, 'nice and easy. I want you in good shape for when you meet Karen.'
Karen
Karen, when the Punto swept by going right at the fork, the jeep's headlights flashing across it, glimpsed the unmistakable features, the beaky vulture nose.
'That's him,' she said. 'Pyle? The guy driving, he's the cop bust my nose.'
'Shit.'
'For him, yeah,' Karen said. 'Get after that car.'
'But the Chora's that way.'
'Screw that,' Karen said, jabbing him once in the ribs with the .38.
Ten minutes later the road straightened out enough for Pyle to say, 'Fuck, where'd they go?'
'Down there,' Karen said as they passed a sign saying Neraki, a turn-off to their left. The turn-off, unpaved, dipping down into a wide valley, the sea glimmering way below, a beach white under the moonlight.
'You see them?' Pyle said.
'Nope. Get back there.'
Pyle pulled in, reversed back. 'Why'd you think they went down there?'
'They killed their lights, Pyle. Where's the sense in killing the lights, keep on going the same way, we're still behind them?'
'None, I guess.'
'So they're down there. Go down slow.'
'Giving them,' Pyle said gloomily, nosing the Punto into the turn-off, 'a better target, they're maybe pulled up somewhere in the bushes.'
'I was you,' Karen said, 'I'd duck down a little. In the movies they always aim for the driver first.'
Sleeps
Niko went down through the hairpin bends in third gear, no lights, a sheer drop into the gorge on their right, the cliff's ruddy rock sheer on their left.
'Ever see The Italian Job?' Ray said. 'Where the van's left hanging over the edge?'
'Try something with a happier ending,' Sleeps said, sweat coursing down his back, the tight suit working like a sauna. They came out of the last bend and cruised through a deserted village of tumbledown cubes, emerged onto an apron of sandstone. The beach curving away to their right, the far headland a vague looming half a mile away. An unreal greeny-black sheen on the sea under a low and nearly full moon. 'What d'you think,' he said, 'back up into the village?'
'What about those?' Ray said, pointing at two shacks in the shadow of the near headland. 'That way no one sneaks up on us from behind.'
'I thought,' Sleeps said, 'we were ones supposed to be doing the sneaking.'
Ray said, 'Niko? Cut the engine.'
In the silence Sleeps heard a gravelly, angry whine. 'What're they driving, a tank?'
'I'd say a jeep. Get us over there, Niko. Behind those shacks.'
'What if we get stuck in the sand?' Sleeps said.
'Then we take their jeep. Niko?'
Niko eased the Punto down off the sandstone lip, ploughed into the soft sand. The car coughed twice, jerked forward, then stalled.
'Okay,' Ray said. 'Let's get over there.'
They crowded into the shack nearest the village and put Niko on his knees, hands behind his back grabbing his ankles. Ray took the handkerchief from Sleeps' breast pocket and balled it into Niko's mouth. Sleeps'd seen sturdier Wendy Houses, the shack more of a lean-to up close, built from driftwood, split cane and spit. They peered through gaps in the wall, watching as the jeep emerged onto the sandstone lip and crawled past the Punto, then bounced down onto the beach, revving hard and spewing up sand as it reversed into position, its headlights raking the shack as it came around to face back at the village.
'You see Karen?' Ray said, dazzled by the lights.
'I never met her,' Sleeps said. 'Wouldn't know what she looked like.'
'Okay,' Ray said as someone hopped down out of the jeep, 'there she is. That's her.'
'What's she doing?'
'At a guess, nothing helpful.'
They watched as Karen half-jogged, crouching, towards a large boulder about halfway between the Punto and the jeep, something glinting dull in her right hand. 'Maybe she's taking a wee,' Sleeps said.
'Because we all take guns when we go for a wee.' Ray watched Karen get comfortable, the boulder between her and the shack, cutting off their escape route to the village beyond. Pyle positioned behind the jeep, no way of telling if he was tooled. 'Specially when we're pissed with Ray.'
'Exactly how pissed,' Sleeps said, 'do think she is?'
'Karen just gets mad, there isn't what you might call degrees.' Ray fumbled in his pocket, dug out his phone. 'Quick question -- you ever shoot anyone?'
Sleeps, palm sweating, re-gripped the Sig. 'I never even held a gun before, Ray.'
'Glad to hear it. Here, dial Rossi's number.'
Sleeps punched in Rossi's number, handed back the phone.
Karen called out, 'Hey, fuck-face? I know you're in there.'
In the quiet of the shack the brrr-brr broke off. Ray said, whispering, 'Rossi? That you?'
He said, 'Ray.'
He said, 'Sleeps gave me it.'
He said, 'A favour, man. One pro to another.'
Madge
'That was Ray,' Rossi told Terry. 'Guy's pinned down up north, needs the cavalry.'
'Is Karen with him?' Madge said.
'It's Karen has him pinned down.'
'She thinks Ray's a rat,' Mel said, 'for running out on her.'
'Ray ran out on Karen?' Madge said.
'The way Ray tells it,' Mel said, 'it was Karen who told him to go. But that didn't stop Ray, when Rossi was pointing the gun at him, telling Rossi she was gone to Crete.'
'You pulled a gun on Ray?' Terry said.
Rossi shrugged. 'It was empty at the time.'
'Partly,' Mel said, 'because Rossi'd already used one of the bullets on Ray's arm.'
'It was you shot him?' Terry said.
'And Anna,' Madge said.
'The wolf,' Rossi groused, 'was attacking me, it was self-defence. And Ray, the guy was coming on with a Glock. What am I s'posed to do?'
'This being the Glock,' Terry said, 'Madge used on Frank.'
'Correct.'
'So you have a wolf and Ray, both coming at you, you put them down. Then walk away with the swag.'
'Until the wolf catches up with me, yeah. Rips my fuckin ear off. Then Karen strolls on with the money.'
'You should be in Nashville,' Terry said.
Rossi said, 'Mel? I'll be needing Johnny's gun.'
'You're going out there?' Terry said.
'Fuckin A. Ray's got Johnny, says I can have him.'
'But he already told me I could have him,' Mel said.
'Get in line. Johnny tried to fry me with a hot rod, so I got first dibs. This is justice we're talking here.'
'I thought you said,' Madge said to Mel, 'that Ray has this Niko character.'
Rossi nodded. 'He says he's got Johnny too. Knows where he is, who's holding him. I'm guessing the cop, Doyle. Those two, they're sneaky fuckers.'
'What about my fifty grand?' Mel said.
'I'm owed,' Rossi said, glancing up at the clock over the restaurant's bar, 'forty grand from Johnny. Then there's Karen, who stole my money. There's anything left over after I get mine, you can have it all.'
'If it's the ransom you're talking about,' Madge said, 'this money Karen has, then technically speaking that's mine. I mean, I was the one kidnapped. The insurance company, they paid out that money for me.'
'This much is true,' Terry said.
'Okay,' Rossi conceded. 'But Karen, when I was inside, she stole my sixty grand stash, used it to keep the wolf in caviar and silk fuckin pillows.'
'Fair point,' Terry said.
Mel put her hand up. 'There's one thing I'm not getting,' she said.
'You're not getting Johnny's rod,' Rossi said, 'still sitting there not going anywhere. That's what you're not getting me.'
'This inheritance Madge is talking about,' Mel said. 'She's offering you three-quarters of a million, but you're still scuffling around after Johnny and Karen?'
Rossi considered that. 'It turns out I'm Madge's son, like she says, which I very much fuckin doubt, then I still gotta do time to get it, mainly because Sleeps is mooning around after you, you don't give a fuck about the guy.' He sipped his White Russian, swirled the ice cubes. 'Johnny and Karen, though, they're here. Karen with a bag of cash where I'm due sixty gees, Johnny the double-crossing fuck just waiting out there for me to fork his eyes out I don't get forty grand toot sweet. You see what I'm saying.'
'Pragmatic, yeah,' Terry said.
'Then,' Rossi said, 'I dunno, maybe I put a round or two in the fucker's knees, from his own hot rod. For justice, like.' He said, 'Mel? Chop-chop, girl. If I know Ray, he ain't gonna stay pinned down forever.'
Doyle
Doyle tried the rent-a-car down on Ormos first, Jacob's, the place closed and dark, open nine to nine. So they had to take the bus up to the Chora, Johnny bitching about how he hadn't taken the bus, for Chrissakes, since the last time he bunked off school. Doyle reassuring him it was incognito, no one expecting to see Johnny Priest on any buses.
Then, they find a place open in the middle of the Chora, Trohokinisi, the guy has all these forms to fill in, in triplicate, a spotty Irish kid working the counter on his own, nervous, not wanting to screw up and checking every last detail.
Doyle, finally, tucking the receipt into her back pocket, taking the keys, the free map, said, 'One last thing. Where's a nice place, somewhere romantic?'
The guy scratched his acne thinking. 'I dunno, Paris?'
'I mean on the island.' She jerked a thumb at Johnny, slumped down in the front of the four-wheel drive jeep she'd picked out on the way in. Johnny expecting, this being his compromise, Doyle to swing by the Blue Orange, Johnny touching base to see if Roger had heard from Niko. 'We're taking a few days out, not looking to be disturbed. Where's our best bet?'
The kid shrugged. 'Manganari, I guess. Down south, right at the end of the island. There's a village but it's quiet, just a few bars and restaurants. A nice beach.'
'How long'll take to get down there?'
'Depends how fast you drive,' the kid said.
'Say I'm driving normal.'
'A couple of hours, maybe. You don't know the road, it's dark, maybe three.'
'Thanks a lot,' Doyle said. 'You've been a huge help.'
'All part of the service,' the kid said.
Doyle hauled herself up into the jeep and said, 'Change of plan, Johnny.'
'Oh, you think?'
Doyle got the keys in the ignition, started up the jeep. 'We're skipping the Blue Orange. I got a feeling, call it a sixth sense, we should avoid it 'til we hear from Niko.'
'This sixth sense you got?' Johnny said. 'I'm thinking it's maybe on the fritz it hasn't picked up the guy in the back with the gun.'
Doyle turned. Rossi sat up showing an automatic and said, 'Last time, I was aiming to miss. This close I couldn't miss if I tried.'
'That's not strictly true,' Doyle said.
Rossi conceded the point. He said, 'Tell you what, though. You guarantee we got a truce until we get Ray sorted, I'll point the rod at the backstabbing fuck here, everyone's a winner.'
'Get Ray sorted?'
'Sure. Karen has him pinned down.'
'Karen?'
'Up north on some beach.' Rossi grinned. 'Man, that Karen. She's a lively one.'
'How come she has him pinned down?'
''Cos Ray hooked up with you.'
'Who told you this?'
'The fuck d'you think? Ray.'
'When?'
'Just now, he rang to say --'
'He rang?'
'Yeah. Said he needed back-up, someone to watch the road into the village, it's the only way in-and-out you're coming from up north. Anyone other'n Sleeps or Ray shows up, I'm following 'em, keeping sketch.'
'He rang you?' Doyle said.
Karen
'Ya needle-dicked bastard!' Karen was usually better at the insults, but this time, her nose a dull, grinding ache, it was too personal to get aesthetic about it. 'Ya cock-sucking monkey-turd motherfucker!'
A good half-hour, maybe more, gone by, and no sign of movement from the shack. Karen wondering if there wasn't some kind of smuggler's trapdoor and tunnel in there. 'Ya think it's cool to beat up on a woman she's not ready for you? Well, I'm good and ready now, ya pussy-dodging fuck. Come on out and we'll do this!'
A cicada chirred in the silence. The sea swuh-swishing on shale.
'Pyle?' she called. 'You see anything?'
'Jesus Christ,' he hissed back, 'we said no names.'
'Yeah, well,' she said, 'you want to think about doing something useful? Like maybe circling out around onto the beach, see what you can see?'
'Are you insane?'
If I'm not, Karen thought, it'll do until the real deal kicks in. She levelled the .32 at the roof of the shack, zinged one off. Waited until the echoes died away, then bawled, 'I'm counting to three, ass-face. You're not out by then, I'm coming in shooting.'
No answer. Karen took a deep breath and bawled, 'One!'
Ray
The moonlight gave the landscape a platinum sheen pitted with black hollows. The only sounds rustles and chirrups, the faint hiss of sand and breeze, and Karen like a docker with Tourette's.
'One!'
Sleeps, still ducked down, looking a little shaken even if the round had gone through the thatched roof a good three feet over his head, regarded Ray with some interest. 'You're a hitter?' he said.
'That's a bad case of mistaken identity,' Ray said. 'She's talking about you or him. And you're saying you never saw her before.'
They both looked at Niko. Ray said, 'Pyle says Karen got her nose busted last night. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'
Niko, gagged, just stared.
'Two!'
'Whoa!' Ray called. 'Karen? It's me. We're coming out, okay? So no guns.' He said to Niko, 'Man, you better not be the guy she's looking for. It's way too nice a night for digging graves.'
Rossi
'It's past,' Johnny said.
'What's that?' Rossi said.
Johnny raised his head from the rear seat. 'That song you're singing. "Will the love I gave her in the past gonna be enough to last, if tomorrow never comes?" It's not in the ass, it's in the past.'
'Seriously?'
'Lie back down,' Doyle told Johnny. 'See,' she said to Rossi, 'if Ray hadn't gone up there in the first place, Karen wouldn't have him pinned down anywhere.'
The cop, Christ, still kvetching about Ray. Half-an-hour or more now, the jeep parked up beyond the village, Rossi and the cop making out like bandits anyone wandered by, getting in a sweaty clinch not to look bogey just sitting out there.
'What you have to understand about Karen,' Rossi said, 'is the girl's got spirit. I mean, she lives it real, y'know? Me and her, we first got it together, Christ, it was like Bowie and Keechie all over again.'
'Until she ripped you off.'
'You think I'm pissed at her for ripping me off?' Rossi shrugged. 'I was inside, the girl had to live. I mean, it wasn't easy for her, y'know? I'm on my third jolt, she's got the wolf to look out for ... The issue,' he said, 'where it became an ethical matter, is when I get back out and she's not stumping up what I'm owed, the stash that'll get me back in the game. That's where me and Karen fell out. You see what I'm saying.'
'You know,' Doyle said thoughtfully, 'there was this time, when we were heading up to the lake to meet you that time, the hand-off?' Rossi nodded. 'I told Karen you were on suspicion of rape,' she said.
'Rape?'
'That girl you snatched, Marsha, to get Karen's number? She made allegations.'
'The fuckin bitch.'
'Except Karen, she was in fast. Said you were a prick, sure, she'd be the first to say it. But no way on any rape.'
'See, that's Karen. Straight up all the way. Although,' he said, 'not recently with me.'
'I could say the same,' Doyle said, 'about Ray. Taking off for this meet, he can't even do me the courtesy of a call.'
'You'd a freaked,' Rossi said, 'Ray even hinted he was going off to get Karen back.'
Doyle mulled that one over. 'Sounds to me,' she said, 'like me and you, we'd be the most to benefit if Karen went away.'
'Went away how?' Rossi said.
'Just, y'know, went away.'
'You're not talking about her doing time?'
'I'm on my holidays, Rossi.'
'And, you're saying, suspended.'
'That too.'
'I get my stash back,' Rossi said, 'the sixty gees, Karen can go anywhere she wants. I'll even buy her the fuckin ticket.'
'What about Anna?'
'The wolf's different. The wolf can't gimme my ear back.'
'You think Karen'll stand for that?'
'No disrespect, Doyle, you're stand-up for a cop. But that's between me and Karen.'
'It's just,' Doyle said, 'I'm wondering.'
'Wondering what?'
'Ray asked you sit out here, right? Keep sketch, you're calling it, to see if maybe Johnny's guy comes through on his own.'
'Perxactly.'
'What's in that for you?'
'Johnny. It was a favour Ray called, how I'd get --'
Doyle glanced meaningfully into the rear of the jeep.
'Oh shit,' Rossi said, 'yeah.'
'What?' Johnny said, his voice coming muffled. 'What now?'
Ray
'I tell you something, people,' Pyle said, 'y'all got a commendable appetite for hardware. You come out here to Ios, paradise in the sun, sleepy little island, and twenty-four hours later it's like Tarantino remade Bull Run. How d'you do it, huh?'
No one answered, the four of them standing in a triangle on the beach, Pyle and Karen split wide, Ray keeping Niko close. Ray watching Karen, the girl dead-eyed, a busted nose and swollen bruise over her right eye, the crooked jaw set. Eyes on Niko.
Pyle said, 'How come, you don't mind me asking, you came down here?'
'We took a wrong turn,' Ray said, 'heading for the castle.'
Pyle pretended to shade his eyes against the moonlight craning his neck up the coast. 'That castle way up yonder? You came down here to get up there?'
'We had the map upside down,' Ray said. Pyle talking too much, Ray with a gun in his hand preferring quiet to any possibility of insult or misunderstanding. Pyle now eyeing Niko up and down. He said, 'So where's Johnny?'
'You'll get Johnny for this guy,' Ray said.
'Okay. But what I'm wondering is, where's Johnny?'
'He's safe.'
'Safe where?'
'Ray?' Karen said. 'You want to take that Johnny shit some place else? Last thing I need right now is witnesses.'
Ray, generally speaking, the situation was any way normal, he'd have used Niko as a shield. But the way Karen was looking, he figured presenting Niko as any kind of target would be a bad idea. For Niko, first, sure. But for Karen in the long run. So he stood beside Niko, Niko on his knees grabbing his ankles, Ray with the .38 cocked and ready to go.
'Where's Anna?' he said to distract her.
Karen showed Niko the .32 and said, 'I've five left. Two for you, one in each ball.'
'Karen --'
'Back off, Ray. He's mine.'
'There's a queue,' Ray said. 'And Pyle got in there first.'
Niko, lids heavy, glanced from Karen to Pyle.
'All we're trying to do here,' Pyle said, 'is get Johnny back safe. Okay? Everything else we can talk about.'
'Last I heard,' Ray said, 'the point of the exercise was to get Karen safe. Now I see she's in one piece, just about, the rest is between you and Niko.'
Niko said, 'Pyle? Bring me up to speed. How come something feels off here?'
'Nothing's off, man,' Pyle said. 'Ray here was just helping out, the Sicilians have Johnny. Except there's no way we're trading you to any Sicilians.'
'Less of the 'we' shit, Tonto,' Ray said. 'Me and Karen, we're out.'
'He got it right about not trading the guy anywhere,' Karen said. 'He's going nowhere 'til I'm done.'
'Guy's a cop,' Pyle said. 'You don't want to go shooting any cops, for Chrissakes.'
Karen swung the .32, pointing it now at Pyle. 'Tell me just once more,' she said, 'what I don't want to do.'
After, when he had time to think about it, Ray consoled himself with the fact that when you take an ankle gun off a guy, you never think he might be packing another on the other ankle. You did, you'd never put him on his knees leaning back to grab his ankles.
But that was after.
Niko, once Karen swung the .32 away, came up fast chopping at Ray's wrist with his right hand, the ankle gun, the Sig's twin, in his left. The .38 went AWOL, Ray rocking back and stumbling in the soft sand as Niko body-charged him out of the way, Niko already sprinting for the village. Not forgetting, the guy cop-trained, to loose off a couple in Karen's direction.
Ray, going down backasswards, heard a high-pitched scream, the sharp crack-crack of Karen's .32.
Sleeps
Ray, before he took Niko out of the shack, told Sleeps he'd try to pull Karen and Pyle as far over on the beach as he could, give Sleeps a chance to get around the back of the shack, sneak up along the headland in the shadows, take up a covering position near the village.
Sleeps'd said, 'You're sure?' Hoping Ray wouldn't change his mind.
'Anything goes wrong,' Ray'd said, 'you're our ace in the hole, they won't be expecting you. Okay?'
Sleeps, ready to pass out in the tight suit, sloshing around in there now, just nodded. Watched as Ray took Niko across the beach level with the shack, not up towards Karen and Pyle, then put Niko on his knees. Sleeps pulled the loose cane at the rear of the shack wide apart enough to struggle through, then crawled on his hands and knees to the nearest outcrop, started back up towards the deserted village. Hearing the murmur of conversation, not able to make out what was being said. He took up a position behind the boulder Karen'd been hiding at and wiped his slick hands on the front of the suit. Checked the Sig, making sure it was ready to go, and then nearly dropped it when the night kicked off.
Sleeps peered around the boulder expecting carnage, saw Niko lurching for the jeep, Ray sprawled on his ass, Karen down and squirming in the sand. The wolf howling like a banshee from the back of the jeep. Ray, hampered by the plaster cast arm, got up on one knee and fired down on Niko, two rounds, both whanging into the jeep. Niko, Christ, like a greyhound hitting the bend, changed direction fast to come shuffling through the sand towards Sleeps.
Sleeps froze.
Had a moment, it wasn't like his life flashed before his eyes, any of that shit, but saw himself, like out-of-body looking down, a fat guy in a small suit holding a gun about to, what, shoot a guy? Gary Rennick from Nelson Mandela Place, a redbrick two-up two-down estate, the nothing special guy, trained to drive fork-lifts and I'm shooting some fucker now?
It was for only a second, no more. But that was plenty. By the time he'd started to bring the gun up, Niko, amped, caught the flicker of shadow and fired from low, still swiveling, not aiming, just squeezing one off. The jolt causing Sleeps' finger to spasm on the double-action trigger, get one away.
The last thing he saw was Niko, framed for a split-second in the yellowy-blue corona of the jeep's headlights, a killer in the sun.
MONDAY
Madge
Madge, out on the balcony in a winged-back cane armchair, a potted palm behind, this back at the Poseidon, said, 'It's just not that simple, Liz. I'm on standby but it's the height of the tourist season here, the place is full of Italians, they can't just yank someone off the plane because Frank died, cause a diplomatic incident ...' She said, 'Say again? I've got a bad line here, I'm losing you ... A tragedy? Well, there's tragedies and then there's tragedies. How's Jeanie doing?'
She had a sip of Cristal while Liz snuffled something incoherent down the line. 'Liz? Look hon, I could be on a flight within the hour, there's no way of knowing. But right now you need to be strong for your sister, you know she was always the dependent one ... Listen, I don't suppose Doug has said anything about, y'know, the autopsy results, like when they're due?'
She said, 'Uh-huh. Well, I'll definitely be home before then, they're working overtime here to get me on a plane. Meanwhile, keep taking any drugs they'll give you. Oh, and Liz? Tell Doug I said that if any newspapers are buzzing around, the TV, you've got my permission to talk to them. Especially the tabloids. Doug'll work out the fee, don't worry about that. And if Doug gets pissy about prejudicing the trial, some shit like that, tell him I'll sue his ass for freedom of speech ... What's that? No, I'm losing you again ... I'll ring first thing in the morning, okay? Love to Jeanie. 'Bye.'
She hung up and said, 'Girl thinks she's distraught now, wait'll she meets Rossi, her brand new brother from Knackeragua.'
Melody leaned out of the other wing-backed cane armchair to top up Madge's glass from the chilled magnum in the silver bucket. She said, 'Madge, there's something you really need to know.'
'What's that?'
'Ray and me, we got drunk on the ferry the other night. Well, Ray got drunk. I listened.'
'And?'
'Say someone was to hook you up,' Melody said, 'I mean, prove to you for sure who your son is. Show you his passport. What d'you think, would that someone be due a finder's fee from this inheritance? I mean, nothing too outrageous. Ten per cent, say.'
Ray
Anna's howl had Ray expecting the worst. Which was why, jogging up the beach crouched down, he made his second mistake in two minutes, realising too late Pyle wasn't tending to Karen, he was scrabbling around in the sand for her .32.
Pyle came up pointing at Ray, backing away, saying, 'Just put it down, man.'
Ray, still moving, dropped the .38 and went past him to Karen, hunkered down. A quick murmur for Anna, get the girl onside, Anna with this anxious whine as she butted her muzzle against Karen's shoulder trying to lick her face. A perfectly round hole in Karen's t-shirt just off-centre below her ribs, Niko cop-trained to aim for the biggest target, the torso. The girl white-faced, skin taut, twitching like she'd been electrocuted. Shock already wearing off, pain now starting to burn.
'Karen? Just try to relax. Don't move, okay? The more you move the more blood you'll lose.' Karen, teeth clenched, just nodded. 'I'm taking a look,' he said. 'Watch my eyes.'
Ray eased the t-shirt out of her jeans, gentle as he could, Karen sucking in a sharp breath as he pushed it up over her belly. The girl, Christ, more worried about her weight than Ray'd believed she would be, wearing some kind of corset, a sheet wrapped tight and knotted low above her left hip.
'How's she doing?' Pyle said from off to the side, Pyle like Billy the Kid, the .32 in one hand, .38 in the other.
Ray undid the knot in the sheet, pulled it away, then realised why there was no bleeding.
Pyle shuffled a little closer, grinning now, saying, 'Now that right there is not a sight you see every day.'
The slug just lodged there below her bottom rib, flattened against Karen's extra weight, half-buried in one of the bundles of cash she'd strapped to her stomach. Ray used a thumbnail to flick it loose. Karen grimaced, the crooked jaw grinding hard. 'Dead man,' she gasped.
'We'll worry about Niko later,' Ray said. 'First we get you to a doctor.'
'Why's she need a doctor?' Pyle said. 'The slug's right there, no penetration.'
'She could be bleeding internally. And I'm guessing she'll have broken ribs, at least. Then there's general trauma, the shock.'
'If it's broken ribs, the doc won't be able to do anything. Meanwhile he's asking how it happened, the girl got this internal bleeding you're saying she might have.'
'She's seeing a doctor,' Ray said, 'fast as I can get her there.'
Pyle held up the .38. 'Sorry compadre, no can do.'
'He wasn't asking for no favour,' Sleeps said stepping out from behind the Punto, both hands braced on the butt of the Sig.
Melody
'Now I know you're shitting me,' Terry said. 'Ray is the kid Israel?'
Madge just stared, lying flopped back in the wing-backed chair.
Mel, nodding, said, 'I have his passport back in the room.' She considered. 'Well, three of his passports to be precise, Ray likes to keep his options open. But yeah, one of them says Israel Brogan. Be a bit of a coincidence if this Israel you're looking for wasn't our Ray. I mean, how many Irish kids were named Israel that year?'
'Any year,' Terry said. 'And it's definitely the right date?'
'The date I can't be certain about,' Mel said, 'but it's the right year, yeah. I mean, Israel Brogan -- that one caught my eye.'
'And your maiden name,' Terry said to Madge, 'it's Brogan?'
Madge shook her head. 'That must be his adopted name,' she whispered.
'Maybe they thought he was Jewish,' Terry said. 'Had him circumcised.'
'This isn't a joke, Terry,' Madge said.
Mel said, 'Anyway, this finder's fee we were --'
There came a knockity-knock-knock at the door. Terry went through, let Rossi in, Rossi parading Johnny out onto the balcony like the guy was Lord Lucan, saying, 'Johnny? I'd like you to meet a friend of mine, name's Terry Furlong. You might've heard of him as Terry Swipes.'
Johnny with a double-take, from Rossi to Terry in the wing-backed armchair. 'Oh shit,' he said, his jaw flopping around. He said, 'I didn't know. How could I know?'
'Don't worry about it,' Terry said. 'You know now.'
'You know forty gees worth,' Rossi told him.
Mel said, 'Rossi? If you don't mind, we're right in the middle of --'
Except then Rossi's phone rang. Rossi checked the caller ID and handed Johnny the phone, saying, 'Here's this guy Niko wants to talk to you. Whyn't you make it a conference call, huh?' Putting the CZ, 9mm Parabellum, in Johnny's face.
So Johnny took the call, hit speaker-phone. 'Niko?'
'Who's this?'
'It's me, Johnny.'
'You alone?'
'Sure, yeah. Where the fuck are you?'
'Where're you?'
'Up in the village, man. You get away?'
'Fucking amateurs he sent.'
'Who sent?'
'Pyle, the fucking hippy.' Niko taking a deep breath, letting it out with a hiss.
'You alright?' Johnny said.
'The fat guy, bastard caught me one in the shoulder.'
Rossi winked at Terry, gave him a thumbs-up.
'The fat guy?'
'The ex-fat guy.' Niko with an evil chuckle. 'Went down so hard there'll be quakes in Australia.' Rossi frowned. Madge put her fingertips to her lips. 'Johnny? You got serious problems with Pyle. He had me took by a guy thought I was you, I think he's a pro hooked up with these Sicilians, working freelance. Told Pyle he had you someplace safe.'
'Bluffing him,' Johnny mumbled.
'What I thought, yeah. Where're you now, the Orange?'
'Yeah,' Johnny said, 'coordinating the, y'know, search. You coming in here?'
'Fuck no, are you kidding? Meet me at the place, a boat's coming in from Santorin to take me off, they'll be here in three, four hours.' Another slow hissing of breath. Niko swore.
'You need that thing seen to?' Johnny said.
'Yeah,' Niko said. 'Any of the guys there know First Aid?'
'I dunno. I'll ask.'
'Ask fast,' Niko said. 'Shit, hold on -- here's a car now. Johnny?'
'Yeah?'
'That boat's for me. You get off the island after you deal with Pyle.'
Niko hung up.
'The ex-fat guy?' Rossi said, not wanting to believe it.
Madge looked at Terry.
Terry said, 'Where's this place this guy's talking about?'
'Up north,' Johnny said. 'Near Homer's Tomb.'
'How long'll it take to get there?'
'Half-an-hour, maybe more.'
'What's the read?' Rossi said.
'I'm thinking,' Terry said, 'if anything's happened Ray --'
'Or Karen,' Madge said.
'Or Gary,' Mel said.
But Rossi only stared at her, stony-faced. 'You're a day late,' he said, 'and more'n a few dollars overdue.'
This being the moment, for no good reason Melody could figure, the baby chose to take its first kick. She put a hand to her belly and said, 'Oh.'
Sleeps
'How about this?' Sleeps said. 'I got one, you got two, Ray's got none.' Anna quartering the sand behind them, snuffling. 'You give him one, we all put 'em away, it'd be like a Mexican stand-off in reverse. Everyone knows everyone else is packing, who's likely to draw?'
This after Ray made the introductions, how Gary was the guy pulling the Sicilian's strings. Pyle allowed he was agreeable, it requiring all three of them to push the Punto out of the sand anyway, Ray not much use with his busted arm, the idea being to get the car going again with a running start. So Pyle gave Ray the .38, Ray insisting it was his before it was Karen's, and Sleeps put Karen in the driver's seat to turn the key once they got the Punto moving.
Once they were off the beach Ray said, 'Gary? You're a wheelman, right? How about you drive, me and Pyle'll sit in the back and admire how a pro does it.'
Karen huddled up riding shotgun beside Sleeps, hugging herself. Anna trotting alongside.
'So where to?' Sleeps said, nosing the Punto up through the bends, the engine whining against the steep climb, the weight in the car.
'Back to the village,' Ray said, 'the health centre. Karen needs seeing to.'
Karen shaking her head. 'This Niko first,' she said.
'We don't even know where the guy's gone,' Ray said.
'I've got a pretty good idea,' Pyle said.
Ray said, 'Gary? How do you want to play it?'
Sleeps considered. 'We get all the way up to the main road and we haven't passed him, it means he's behind us.'
'Then what?'
'We could turn around and come down slow. Maybe walking it, beating the bushes.'
'What's the other option?'
'We keep going, get Karen to the doctor. Then find this guy and kill him.'
'Kill him?' Pyle said.
Sleeps was still only realising how close he'd come when Niko squeezed one off, Sleeps ducking away behind the boulder, getting horizontal fast. But it was like the bullet, whining by so close, had punctured some cloudy bubble, leaving Sleeps staring up at the star-twinkling sky for the first time in his life, aware now of how much he'd had to lose, how fragile and temporary it all was.
Although at the time, lying there face down in the dirt, not knowing for that split-second if Niko would keep going or stop to administer the coup de grâce, Sleeps'd had time for only one thought: Christ, he's going to get her too.
'Guy tried to kill me,' he said simply. 'It's open season now.'
'I'll dig you the hole,' Ray said.
Karen, cradling her ribs with one arm, got herself twisted around. 'Ray? We lose him now, we'll never find him again.'
'She's right,' Pyle said. 'And the fucker'll come back with a SWAT team, man. Calling in the hammerdown option.'
Ray said, 'Gary?'
'If Karen reckons she'll make it,' Sleeps said, 'then it's Karen's call.'
Karen gave a little shudder, an after-shock. 'I'll make it,' she said. 'Pull in.'
Sleeps pulled over to the verge. Karen opened the door and chucked at Anna, pulled the girl's head into the car, onto her lap. A little game of tug-o'-war ensued, when Anna refused to give up the rag in her mouth.
'What's that?' Pyle said.
'From the stench,' Ray said, 'I'm guessing she found Niko's gag.'
'Christ,' Sleeps said, 'I could track him from that myself.'
'The boy likes his garlic,' Pyle said.
Karen wrenched the rag free and then waved it under Anna's nose, hissed in her ear. Anna's ears pricked up and then she threw her head back and howled again, Sleeps knowing he'd be hearing that sound for years to come in his bad dreams.
Karen shook her head unbuckling the muzzle, put a finger to her lips and then buried her face in the wolf's ruff. The wolf ducked around the open door, then took off at a steady lope up the road.
Sleeps put the Punto in gear, got going. He said, 'Ray? The hound being free and all, no muzzle, this might be a good time to put in a courtesy call to Rossi, give the guy a sporting chance if Anna misses out on Niko.'
Karen turned her head, slow, to raise an eyebrow at Ray.
'It's a long story,' Ray said.
Rossi
Rossi took Johnny in the bathroom and had him stand in the bath and drop his trousers, bend over grabbing the taps. 'Ever see Things To Do In Denver, Johnny?'
'Listen, Rossi, I couldn't have known. If I'd --'
Rossi rammed the CZ between Johnny's buttocks. 'They've this thing in the movie, it's called buckwheats. Guy takes a round up the hole, it's a horrible death, lasts hours.'
'Rossi, for the love of Jesus --'
'I'd a thought,' Rossi said cocking the CZ, 'you'd be more a Judas man. I mean, Johnny, you set me up with a hot fucking rod. So it'd be what they call, y'know, that thing, you were to take a round up the hole from your own hot rod now.'
Johnny with wobbly knees. 'It wasn't meant for you, man.'
'No?'
'You were supposed to hand off to Niko, let him take the heat.'
'Meanwhile,' Rossi said, 'I'm running all over with a smoking gun. For ten fuckin grand?' He shoved the CZ a little further between Johnny's white hairy buttocks. 'I'm thinking, that forty gees you owe, it's maybe double-bubbling again.'
'Sure thing,' Johnny said. 'Anything you say.'
'Don't agree so easy, man. You do that, you're either fink all the way through or you're planning some other grift. Either way, I'm worried.'
'You got nothing to worry about, Rossi.'
'I got my main man down, Johnny, maybe bad, I dunno. And I got this Niko guy running free, guy's a rogue cannon who maybe wants you, setting you up for a meet at this commie joint you're calling it.'
'Why would he want me?'
'You tried to stiff him,' Rossi jamming the CZ a little further, 'with a bogey rod.'
'How would he even know?'
Rossi thought about that. 'You don't think he gave it up a bit easy?' he said. 'How he's scooting out, leaving you to clean up? I mean, this is a guy, he's just been in a firefight with some crew he thinks is working for the guy works for you, this Pyle guy. You were Niko, you'd already stopped a slug, you wouldn't be maybe wondering who's with who?'
'Oh-kay,' Johnny said. 'But if he thinks I'm offside, why's he telling me where to meet?'
'See if you show up. Or if you don't, y'know, send some more Sicilians.'
'So if I show it's all cool. But if I send a crew, he's dead.'
'You don't have any Sicilians, Johnny.'
'You think Niko's taking that chance?'
'I dunno. I mean, you know the guy better'n me, he's your guy.'
'Hold up.' Johnny peered back over his shoulder. He said, 'You think Niko's my guy?'
'You're saying he isn't?'
Johnny shook his head sadly, said, 'I'm betting you don't even know he's a cop.'
Rossi let the CZ drop away. 'You're telling me,' he said, 'it was a cop took out Sleeps?'
Johnny like a toy dog in a car window, head bobbing.
'Jesus, Johnny.' Rossi shaking his head. 'You're tied in with cops?'
'It's not what you think, man.'
'See, that's been my problem all along,' Rossi said, giving the CZ a vicious twist as he rammed it home between Johnny's buttocks, Johnny giving a little yelp and rising up on his tippy-toes. 'Too much fuckin thinking.' He cocked the gun, slipped the safety off. 'Y'know the real beauty of buckwheats, Johnny? The whole body works as a silencer. Not a lot of people know that.'
'What do you want?' Johnny screamed. 'Just tell me what you want.'
'Blood,' Rossi said and squeezed the trigger.
Doyle
Doyle picked up and said, 'Ray?'
'Steph?'
'Hold on a sec.' Doyle none too comfortable negotiating through hairpin bends with sheer drops the other side of a low rail. She tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder, said, 'Okay, go on.'
'The fuck're you doing with Rossi's phone?'
'Rossi's a nice guy, Ray. Thought you and me should talk once in a while. Plus I reminded him, if we were to swap, about all the contacts he'd get from Johnny's phone.'
'He's there now?'
'Nope.'
'Where's Johnny?'
'Johnny, yeah. I gave him to Rossi too.'
'You gave him to --'
'I figured, you and Rossi being best buds now, you're telling him sad stories about you and Karen, that wouldn't be such a problem. I mean, maybe if you'd rang me when I still had Johnny, maybe then we could have --'
'Let me talk to Johnny, Doyle.'
'I don't have him.'
'Fuck.' A heavy sigh, Ray accepting it. 'So where are you?'
'Right now? Coming down the valley towards this beautiful beach, all moonlit and shit, trés romantic. Karen still have you, y'know, pinned down?'
'Shit, Doyle -- which fucking beach?'
'Neraki, the one Rossi said Karen had you --'
'Get out of there, Doyle. Do it now.'
'Don't you dare take that tone with --'
'Niko's loose, Doyle. We're coming up the road behind him, we don't know where the fuck he is.'
Doyle slowed down to make another bend, fumbling with the gear-stick, still coming to terms with it being on the right-hand side, Doyle half the time trying to change gear with her left hand and grabbing the window-winder. She came out of the bend saying, 'Shit, yeah, I think I can see his lights, way down --'
'That's us, Steph. Niko's on foot.'
'He's on --'
Niko reared up in the headlights, wild-looking, one hand holding up something shiny, the other pointing a gun at the Suzuki's windscreen. Doyle jammed on so hard the phone flew out from between her ear and shoulder, bounced back off the dashboard, Doyle following its general trajectory, the bridge of her nose cracking against the rim of the steering wheel. The Suzuki skidding to a halt about three feet short of ploughing Niko off the road and out over the low rail.
He came around the driver's side brandishing his badge, shouting something guttural in Greek, then hauled open the door and cut off, staring. 'Stephanie?'
Doyle, her vision blurry, tears stinging, felt something warm and wet oozing from her nose. Niko said, 'What are you doing here?'
'Oh Niko,' Doyle bawled, 'they took Johnny.'
Niko bundled her across into the passenger seat and sat in, tucked away his badge, the gun. Executed a fast three-point turn, then burned rubber surging back up the road, all the while watching the rearview.
'Can you believe this shit?' he said. 'They sent a fucking wolf.'
Karen
'Where now?' Sleeps said, the Punto climbing out of the valley onto the main road.
'Go right,' Pyle said. 'He'll head for the port or the coast, probably the coast. He needs to get out.'
Sleeps went right and pushed up a gear and said, 'Pity we didn't remind the wolf to stay on the road, not go tracking the guy cross-country.'
'Shssssh,' Ray said. Doyle, her phone still on, her voice crackling on Ray's speaker-phone, said, 'You want me to take a look at that arm?'
'It'll wait,' Niko said.
First time she set eyes on Doyle, Karen'd known the girl was trouble. Bad enough she was a cop, one with something to prove to the guys down the station, but then she starts batting the lashes at Ray, chasing the guy all over Christendom. No shame. Doyle the first time Anna ever got it wrong, cuddling up to the cop first time she met her, Doyle under the impression Anna the two-time killer, three parts wolf to one husky, was what she called a wee dote.
Karen was starting to wonder, the way Anna'd taken to Pyle so fast too, if the girl's instincts weren't haywire. Anna stopping Rossi's bullet with her forehead, it'd be strange if that hadn't fritzed up her works a little. Karen feeling all kinds of fritzed herself, in shock but buzzing, still kind of stunned but feeling electrified too, adrenaline coursing.
Doyle, she wanted Ray, that was one thing. But if the girl tried to get between Karen and Niko, pull some mutual appreciation shit between cops, Karen'd go through her for a short-cut ...
'So who told Johnny?' Doyle was saying.
'Fuck's it matter?' Niko said. 'He knows. It's blown.'
'What happens now?'
'We get out. After that we worry about what happens.'
'We?'
'If I'm a cop, they'll think you're a cop too.'
'They didn't when they took Johnny,' Doyle said.
The clink-flick of a Zippo. 'What happened?'
'Johnny, I couldn't put him off, he wanted to get to the Orange, said he was worried about you. I'm saying no, we need to stay out of sight, but he started wondering, I could tell, how come I'm giving all these excuses. So I thought I'd take him along, stick tight.'
'And someone hit you?'
'When I wouldn't back off.'
'Bastard.'
Karen gritted her teeth. Sleeps said, 'Pano Kambos coming up fast. What now?'
'Shssssh,' Ray said.
'The Blue Orange,' Pyle whispered. 'You know it?' Sleeps nodded, stayed with the main road.
' ... paranoid as fuck,' Niko was saying. 'I'm guessing Pyle, the way it sounded back at the beach, is planning a reverse takeover on Johnny, maybe cutting these Sicilians in. Or just using them for muscle, a flat fee, I don't know.'
'A reverse takeover on what?'
'This dope they're running, I told you in Athens, it goes out through the hippy commune.'
'And this is where you're meeting Johnny,' Doyle said. 'The hippy commune.'
'Are you insane? I go in there I'm coming out horizontal.'
'So where?'
'This other place. Hey, is that your phone?'
'Yeah, shit. It must've fallen when I jammed on that time.'
A scrabbling sound, then click-brrrrrrrrr.
'Shit,' Ray said.
'It's okay, I know where he's going,' Pyle said. 'Gary? Get back to Pano Kambos, go left.'
Sleeps pulled in, u-turned, got back on the road.
Karen said, 'Ray? We get there, you best look out for Doyle. She gets in my way she's going down too.' She said, 'Which reminds me, who's got my gun?'
'That'd be me,' Pyle said, handing it forward. He said, looking from Karen to Sleeps and back again, 'So that's both of you want Niko. Ray? You got a coin we could maybe flip?'
Ray
They came off a bend and over a small rise and straightaway Sleeps cut the engine, the lights, allowing the Punto coast down slow into the parking area, tyres crunching on gravel. A Suzuki jeep parked to one side, a crazy-paved path leading away from the parking area to some kind of pagoda halfway up the hill, the black sea sparkling beyond. No one around. Sleeps scooching down in the driver's seat, just in case. 'Think that's them?' he said.
'Why don't you just ring Doyle, Ray?' Karen, with an edge. 'See if she's out for a moonlight stroll with our boy Niko.'
'No need,' Pyle said. He pointed off to the right, the mouth of a ravine a jagged black chunk dug out of the silvery landscape. 'Guy thinks he can't trust us back at the commune, he's called a boat in here.'
'Back-up?' Ray said.
'Don't know if that'd make a whole lot of sense,' Pyle said. 'Like, he'll have a crew on standby, just laying off the coast ready to storm in?'
'There's prisons just busting out all over,' Sleeps said, 'with guys who forgot how sneaky cops can get.'
'Like Doyle, say,' Karen added.
'Whoa.' Pyle glancing at Ray. 'This Doyle's a cop?'
'Suspended,' Ray said. 'Getting out.'
'This what she's telling you,' Karen said. 'Chased you all the way across a continent just to let you know she's retiring, how much her pension's worth.'
'You're saying,' Ray said, 'maybe it's female intuition, you know what's going on in her head.'
Sleeps said, 'Be fair, man. Doyle looked pretty friendly with Niko to me, the time you snatched Johnny.'
Everyone looked at Ray. Pyle cocked his head to one side. 'She's in with Niko?'
'She knows him from way back,' Ray said. 'Some kind of training programme, cops from all over the EU teaming up, sharing expertise. But that was --'
'She told you this?' Karen said.
'Yep.'
'And you're still here?'
Ray shrugged. 'Pyle had you,' he said. 'Trading you off for Johnny.'
Karen looked at Pyle, who said, 'That's not exactly the way it was.'
Karen, still staring at Pyle, said, 'Okay, but now Pyle doesn't have me anymore. How come you're not getting out?'
'Niko finds out Doyle's hooked up with me,' Ray said, 'the girl's in all kinds of trouble. And she bought in, Karen. I couldn't have got you back without her.'
Karen, with the busted nose and swollen eye, didn't need to try to look any more evil. She gave it a shot, though. Looking to Ray like a gargoyle with the mean reds bad.
'Outta curiosity,' Pyle said, 'is there anyone here who trusts anyone else even, y'know ...' He brought his thumb and forefinger close together, squinted through.
'If it's any consolation,' Karen said, 'you're the one I trust least.' She jerked a thumb at Sleeps. 'And all I know about him is he's Rossi's guy.'
'Point well made,' Pyle said, 'and taken.'
Sleeps said, 'I got an idea. Hands up anyone wants to see Niko make it off the island.' He glanced at all three in turn. 'Okay,' he said. 'So let's do this.'
Rossi
Lost again, Christ, this fuckin place ...
Rossi sitting parked up at the fork in the road on a rusty bucket-a-shit moped, wiggling a finger in his good ear, one sign saying Homer's Tomb, the other Pakoto. Trying to remember Johnny's directions. Except Johnny hadn't been making much sense at the time, the guy in agony, blood spattering gloss-red all across the porcelain bath, the white tiles ...
Rossi with a jones for this guy Niko, the cop who'd brought down Sleeps, man, if he could've bottled it they'd never make Viagra again.
He was already a little spooked, the place dead and bleak, this bluey light from the moon making it all ghostly-like, when he heard the first faint howl.
He revved the moped, thinking, no fuckin way ...
Except it was. The wolf. There in the mirror, coming down out of the hills like a furry fuckin Panzer. Headed straight for him.
He kicked the scooter to life, the back wheel skidding out as it lunged forward. Got out ahead but couldn't pull away from her, the road gouged and rutted, bad drops on the bends, a lot of tight turns. His good ear tingling, Rossi feeling the hound's hot breath on the back of his neck, the bitch every second maybe half a stride off making a lethal leap.
Rossi wouldn't have minded so much, but he could've just as easily stole the helmet when he was taking the scooter.
Safety first, he fumed as he banked into a long bend, safety fuckin first.
It occurred to him, as he came off the bend and left the road going over a small hump, to wonder how many races Rossi, the Doc, would've won with a fuckin wolf on his ass ...
He whined through the parking area scattering gravel, flashed past the jeeps, a glimpse of Doyle's Suzuki, kept going out into the scrub, the moped bucking now on the rough terrain, slowing up, Rossi bouncing around rodeo-style.
Another piercing howl. Rossi turtled up, skin crawling, hearing a note of savage glee as the hound readied to --
Except the wolf hit the gas, the moped by Rossi's clock doing thirty miles an hour and it just went by him like he was standing still, heading for this ravine gouged out of the cliff, ears flat, tail streaming out behind.
Rossi hauled hard on the brakes, brought the moped slewing around in a clanking half-circle. Thinking, what the fuck ...?
Then realised, shit, yeah, Karen ...
Doyle
Niko stationed Doyle behind a low ridge where the soft sand of the beach dropped two feet to the hard-packed strand and told her to let fly if she heard as much as a bat fart, then took off his shirt, his tanned skin taking, Doyle couldn't help but notice, a nice bluey sheen from the moonlight. The beach narrow between two high headlands that were virtually sheer, a long channel leading out to the placid open sea. Niko ripped off one of the shirt-sleeves, tore it into strips, then broke his Zippo apart and squeezed the spongy bit onto one of the strips, which he rolled in a ball and tucked into the shirt's breast pocket. Then he put the Zippo back together again.
The faint echo of a mournful howl came wafting down the gorge.
'You see that wolf,' Niko said, 'you shoot to kill.'
'Sure thing.'
'Actually,' Niko said, holding out his shirt, beckoning for the gun, 'you signal the boat, I'll watch the gorge.'
'That's okay,' Doyle said. 'I'm cool.'
'I mean it. You ever shot to kill before?'
'Never, no.'
'Then give me the gun. Here.'
Doyle had a split-second to consider the options, one being to back off and hold the gun on Niko, hope Ray arrived before the boat, this while not knowing if Ray'd heard her conversation with Niko, or even if it'd been any use to him if he had. If he hadn't, Doyle was looking at holding off Niko and a whole boatload with a gun she didn't know how many rounds it had, fighting a rearguard action up the ravine with, Christ, ten miles back to civilisation across an island she didn't know, this if she ever made it out. And nothing back at civilisation except a load more local cops curious as to why she'd unilaterally declared war on Greece.
She swapped the gun for the shirt and the Zippo.
'You hear the boat,' he said, 'see it pass across the top of the channel, then get --'
Another howl, this one louder, magnified by the ravine. More vicious than melancholy, Doyle thought, now that she could hear it right. Niko dropped to one knee and snapped one off into the darkness.
When the echoes died away, Doyle could hear a faint hum. Tinnitus, she decided, then realised it was the boat.
'Light the rag! Light it!'
Doyle held the Zippo to the pocket of the shirt and made a half-hearted attempt to flick the Zippo. What sounded like a small avalanche now tumbling down the gorge. Niko fired another one off, then thrust the gun at her and snatched away the shirt. Doyle let the Zippo drop onto the hard, damp sand.
'Fuck!' he said, snatching it up, flicking desperately. A thin lance of light shot out from the boat to probe the beach. 'We're here!' Niko bellowed, still flicking the Zippo.
Anna came around the final bend like a two-hundred-pound Fury, paws sliding out from beneath her as she skidded on loose shale, the one amber eye glowing in the dim shadows. Fangs bared and gleaming as she found her feet again, surged forward.
Niko yelped, dropping the shirt and Zippo as he turned to sprint down the beach and plunge into the water, waving wildly at the boat. 'Here!' he screeched. 'We're here!'
Doyle went down on one knee and gripped her gun-hand by the wrist, took a quick aim, loosed off three in quick succession. On the last one she heard a metallic plink as the bullet found metal.
The searchlight snapped off. An engine throttled up and then boomed, churning a phosphorescent wake as the prow angled up and the boat veered away in a wide semi-circle.
'Nooooooo!' Niko screamed as he ploughed deeper, thighs pumping but going nowhere fast.
Doyle pivoted on her knee to find Anna coming straight at her, two strides away, slavering drool, the amber eye fixed on the shirt at Doyle's feet.
Doyle dropped the gun and opened her arms wide, went to meet her.
Sleeps
Once Niko realised Doyle was down and busy wrestling the wolf, it was basically a sprint to see who got to her first, Niko sloshing up out of the tide and making for the .32 in the sand.
Sleeps was never going to win that race.
Ray had the broken arm. Karen, busted ribs and all, just wasn't a sprinter.
Niko came sliding in like it was bases loaded, bottom of the ninth. Came up in a blur of sifting sand pointing at Ray.
Ray pulled up hard still ten yards short and overshot a little, bounced a couple on his rigid left leg. Then he went into a slight crouch, the hands going up and out, a goalie facing a penalty-kick. The .38 in his right.
Doyle by now lying on top of Anna, the hound in a half-nelson. Doyle murmuring something in her ear. Anna twitching, growling low in her throat and straining away from Doyle, the paws churning up sand.
Niko pointing at Karen.
'Easy,' Ray said.
Sleeps, outraged by the guy throwing down on woman, said, 'Point that somewhere else.'
Niko didn't even glance his way. 'What happens now?' he asked Ray.
'I don't know. Any suggestions?'
'Everyone walks away. After that it's just detail.'
'I can work with that. Now point the gun somewhere else.'
'What about her?' Niko said. Karen with her .32 pointed at Niko's chest, a little hunched over protecting her ribs.
'Karen?' Ray said.
'Being shot I don't mind so much,' she said. 'It's the nose that bothers me.'
'Don't worry about it,' Niko said. 'You weren't much of a looker before.'
'Hey,' Sleeps said. 'We don't do personals.'
'Shot is one thing,' Karen went on. 'Pistol-whipped, that's different.'
'Are you going to tell her,' Niko asked Ray, 'or am I?'
'You don't tell Karen,' Ray said. 'You ask nice.'
'He's not leaving here, Ray.'
'Karen ...'
And then Ray turned his head, cocking an ear to the ravine, hearing the faint hum grow louder, start to whine and snarl, become a rasping roar. This weird screeching wail floating above it aiming for a whole new frequency.
Ray glanced at Sleeps.
'Cometh the hour,' Sleeps said.
Rossi
Rossi was only twenty yards into the ravine, slowly slaloming between the boulders and outcrops, the slope starting to get steep, when he realised he'd hauled on the brakes a little too hard back at the parking area. This after one gentle tug sent the cable twanging free, pinging past his face and scalping the Daffy Duck hat off his head. Rossi ducked under and watched the brake cable as it sprung back to flop out in front of the moped. Gave a low whistle, relieved.
Then the moped fell off the edge of the world.
The drop was only three or four feet but it was plenty. The moped bounced once on a sloping shelf of rock and shot forward, not so much rounding the sharp twists and turns as slamming into one wall and veering across to clang against the other, hot orange sparks blazing. Rossi dragged along in its wake, his hands at times the only contact he had with the screeching machine, the moped bucking and straining like it was possessed by the soul of Steve McQueen.
'Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!' he screamed as the moped glanced off the canyon wall and caromed out of the ravine onto the beach, Rossi only dimly aware of figures scattering, diving for cover, as he zoomed past. Then the moped whumped into the soft sand atop a small ridge and sailed out into the Greek night.
Rossi, without even thinking, let go the handlebars and twisted to clutch at the tall beaky guy, catching him under the chin with his forearm and practically decapitating him where he stood with a classic clothesline.
They went down together in an explosion of sand, a tangle of arms and legs.
Rossi kicked free and crawled away, rolled onto his back, already reaching for the CZ. Then realised the beaky guy was already on his knees, choking, one hand to his throat, the other -- and Rossi couldn't help but admire the guy's balls -- shakily pointing a gun at Karen. Doyle sprawled across the wolf.
'I'm guessing,' the beaky guy rasped, 'you're this fucking Sicilian I been hearing so much about.'
Madge
'Except I'd already taken the bullets out,' Melody said. 'Even checked there wasn't one up the spout.'
'The spout?' said Madge, sitting on the toilet, smoking.
'That's what Ray called it, I don't know if it's a technical term.' Mel wadded another handful of toilet paper, began wiping down the sink, the girl with her sleeves rolled up. Madge, even looking at it, found it hard to believe one man could bleed so much, the bathroom not entirely unlike a Damien Hirst installation. 'Basically,' Melody said, 'it's when a bullet's ready to go.'
'So the gun was empty.'
'Sure. But Johnny didn't know that.'
'Did Rossi?'
'That I don't know.'
Madge made a sweeping gesture encompassing the blood-streaked tiles, the bath and sink. 'So where did all this come from?'
'According to Rossi, Johnny was up on his tippy-toes bent over, Rossi had the gun jammed up his wazoo. Then, Rossi pulled the trigger, Johnny toppled over or passed out. Anyway, he came down face-first on the taps.'
Madge grimaced, the taps being old-fashioned, with four spokes rather than rounded. Johnny, slumped in the corner with a strawberry-coloured pillowcase jammed against his face, moaned a little. 'How bad is he?' she said.
'Not sure. He won't let me touch him.' Melody indicated the little pile of teeth on the rim of the sink, some of them with lumps of flesh still attached. 'But it looks like he came down on his upper jaw, smashed the palate. I mean, he was still hooked onto the tap when I got in here. He was lucky it didn't punch through to the brain.'
'He looks lucky,' Madge said. 'So what happens now?'
'Terry, when he finds a doctor, brings him back here, gets Johnny stitched up. Although we'll have to strip him off first, make it look like he was having a shower when he, y'know, slipped.'
'What if he tells the doctor what really happened?'
'With Terry standing there?' Melody shook her head. 'Besides, presuming he can even talk with his mouth stitched up, his palate busted all to hell, what's he going to say? He's a coke-dealer out of Amsterdam, got ambushed on Ios by you and Terry?' Melody shook her head. 'No offence, Madge, but you don't exactly look the criminal type.'
'None taken,' Madge said. She had a long drag on the cigarette, let it out slow.
Melody dropped the bloody wad of paper into the wastebasket, the sign above the toilet asking for no paper waste to be flushed. Started unwinding another handful. 'So what're you going to do about Ray?' she said.
'I honestly don't know. I guess he's entitled to what Rossi was getting.'
'You don't sound convinced,' Melody said, hunkering down to swab at the underside of the sink.
'I'm just tired,' Madge said. 'It's been a long week.' She shrugged. 'Maybe I'll just donate the money to charity, send him and the twins a little card, let them know all the good works being done in their name. Maybe,' she said gloomily, 'that way some good'll finally come out of Frank being a douche-bag.'
'Goats for Africa,' Melody said, 'that kind of thing?'
'Something like that, yeah. Although goats, I don't know about you, they give me the willies.' Johnny moaned again, slumped a little further into the corner. Madge said, 'What'd I like is if it went to some kind of rehabilitation, where you could see it changing people's lives. Maybe, y'know, education. I mean, that was the whole point of giving Rossi the money.'
Melody nodding along as she swabbed. She said, 'You heard about this new operation, FARCO?'
Karen
Rossi got up and dusted himself off and said, 'Sicilian, yeah,' then forked his fingers at Niko's eyes like a snake striking. Without taking his eyes off Niko, he said to Doyle, 'You okay?'
Karen thinking, Christ, first Ray, and now Rossi?
Doyle still spreading herself across Anna, talking her down like some kind of wolf-whisperer. 'I'm good,' she said.
'Whatever you do,' Rossi said, 'don't for the love a Christ let that bitch go.' Then, to Niko, 'What you're going to do right now is take that rod and point it at your own fuckin foot. And if I say blow a fuckin toe off, don't go rushing in 'til I say which one.'
Karen, the last thing she wanted was Rossi getting involved, screwing her up all over again. 'Back off, Rossi,' she said. 'He's mine.'
Rossi, searching her out, saw Sleeps first. Did a little double-take. 'Shit, man -- I thought you were down.'
'Nearly was,' Sleeps said, grim. 'The fucker's mine.'
Ray said, 'He's no one's, okay? Everyone's walking away, it's already arranged.'
'No way,' Rossi said. 'Guy's a cop.'
'We know,' Karen and Ray said together. Rossi raised an eyebrow at Ray, then glanced across at Karen.
Karen, she knew Rossi had issues with her, but even at that she was a little surprised at the way his face darkened when he met her eyes. His own getting small and mean. He pointed at her, arm straight out, forefinger trembling.
'Who's the dead cunt,' he snarled, 'did that?'
'Niko,' Karen said simply. 'It's why he's mine.'
Rossi turned to look at Niko, his gun coming up to point at Niko's face. Except by now Niko, after the little exchange between Rossi and Doyle, was holding his gun about six inches from Doyle's head, Doyle still struggling with Anna, unaware.
The way Rossi grinned, Karen's stomach turned over.
'You shoot her,' Rossi said, 'I shoot you, the world's two cops better off. Everyone's a winner. Or,' he said, 'you can put the rod down and take your buckwheats like a man. Whaddya say?'
Ray
Ray said, 'Rossi? Doyle goes down, you go too. I shit you fucking not.'
Doyle, hearing her name, looking up and around, flinched back from Niko's gun. 'Jesus Christ,' she said. 'Niko?' Anna whining harder now, wriggling around beneath her.
Ray, keeping it low, said, 'What I'm thinking is, the guy's a cop, we hand him up to Johnny, let Johnny do him. That way we all walk.'
'You're not getting it,' Rossi said, jaw set hard.
'I get it, yeah. Guy's a scumbag, broke Karen's nose. But you're going to do time for him, Greek time? He's not worth it, man.'
'See,' Rossi said, 'that'd be a plan, yeah, if Niko was Johnny's guy, not the other way round.'
'He's a cop,' Ray said, 'working undercover, stinging Johnny.'
'Not perxactly,' Rossi said. 'Johnny and me, we had us a little chat.'
Sleeps said, 'Pyle, buddy?' Pyle backing off a step or two, a slow moonwalk aiming for the ravine. 'You leave now you'll miss the big finale.'
'What's Johnny saying?' Ray asked Rossi.
'He's saying he's Niko's guy.'
'Johnny's Niko's guy?'
'What he says. One of 'em, anyway. Says Niko's got guys, shit, all over. Paris, Milan, Vienna, you name it ... He's got this set-up going with guys in Crete, down the south coast, they've been smugglers since King Tut was knee-high to his midget mother, the guy's trafficking in from Morocco, out through the islands.'
'And Johnny's just one of these guys.'
'Correct.'
Ray, thinking it through, said, 'So if Johnny was to go missing, then Niko'd need to fill a hole in 'Dam. Someone he can work with, already knows. Someone like, just for argument say, our old buddy Pyle who arranged for me to snatch Johnny.'
Niko glaring now at Pyle.
'Sounds logical, yeah,' Rossi said. 'Hey, maybe whack Niko too while he's in the mood.'
'Putting Niko away,' Ray said, 'that'd be worst case scenario, cause all sorts of confusion. I mean, it's an option, sure, Niko doesn't play ball. Guy doesn't even have to know it's on the slate until he says no.'
'So Johnny goes down,' Rossi said, 'and then Niko, he's maybe squiffy about internal promotion they call it, might or might not.'
'Pyle?' Ray said. 'If we're misrepresenting you, maybe slandering, you want to tell us where we got it wrong?'
Niko, still glowering at Pyle, said, 'Here's the deal. You give me Pyle, you get to run the island. Cut it up whatever way you want. I guarantee no one touches you.'
'Sounds tempting,' Rossi said. 'I mean, it's not Sicily, could do with a few street-signs, but it's an okay place.' He said, 'Only thing is, you're dying this horrible death from buckwheats for lamping Karen, what good's it us giving you Pyle?'
'No buckwheats,' Ray said. 'Okay? Everyone's walking away, that's agreed.'
'Who agreed?' Karen said.
'Jesus, Karen -- what're you going to do, execute a fucking cop?'
Niko, slow, reached into his pocket and pulled his wallet. Then he dropped his gun onto the sand and brought up his badge.
'You don't have any crucifix in there?' Rossi said. 'Some garlic, maybe?'
'I guarantee,' Niko said, solemn, holding the badge high, 'no one touches you.'
'Except you already did,' Karen said, taking a step forward, bringing up the .32.
Ray, turning, lunging for her arm, knew from her tone he was already too late ...
Sleeps
After, comparing notes, they worked out that Ray and Sleeps had the only guns packing ammo.
Pyle, explaining how he'd wanted Niko gone, sure, but wanting Sleeps and not Karen to take the rap, had unloaded her .32 in the Punto before handing it forward.
Mel, Rossi calling her the Klepto, the girl couldn't help herself, had long ago swiped the clip from CZ.
And Niko, blazing away first on the beach at Karen, then at Sleeps making his getaway, then firing blind up the ravine at Anna, had left himself empty. Which was why he'd dropped the gun and gone for the last resort, the badge, putting Sleeps in mind of Dudley Smith in LA Confidential, Bud White blowing Dudley away from behind ...
Ray was packing but he was too busy rugby-tackling Karen, taking her out a split-second after the .32 went click, the hammer coming down dry.
Which left Sleeps, already pointing at Niko's torso, the biggest target, bracing a stiff wrist ready for when the guy came up from grabbing his rod off the sand. Except Niko, knowing his gun was empty, went for Doyle instead, hooked an elbow around her throat and started dragging her backwards down the beach, a hostage.
'Everyone drops their guns,' he croaked, 'or I snap her fucking neck.'
Forgetting, in his panic, about the wolf.
Which wasn't an issue immediately, the wolf coming up in a flurry of sand and springing for Ray, who was now rolling off Karen. Snarling, the jaws wider than Ray's head and about to guillotine him with one snap, only for Ray to shove his broken arm in the way, the wolf crunching down on the rock-hard cast. That only pissed her off even more, but gave Karen time to grab her collar and point, sic the girl on Niko -- or Niko and Doyle, Sleeps couldn't say for sure.
Niko, bluff called, panicked again and started stumbling backwards down the beach, dragging Doyle with him, Doyle turning red in the face, eyes bugging out, until she remembered what God gave her elbows for and sunk one deep into Niko's groin. His cheeks puffed out in an agonised squeal, and then he toppled forward as Doyle tore away from his arm and pitched forward onto the sand.
The wolf took off from the top of the low rise like a thoroughbred, arcing out over Doyle and landing fore-paws first on Niko's chest, punching him like a furry battering ram so the guy flew a good three or four feet before touching down. His shoulders hit the sand first, the impact jolting his head back so that his throat lay open for the split-second the wolf needed. She ripped out his throat like so much warm marshmallow, then howled a moon-shivering glee and burrowed her snout again in the ragged hole.
She got in there so deep, the blood fountaining slick and black in the moonlight, that Sleeps for a moment wanted to believe the girl had struck oil. Then he lowered the gun and turned away, went down on one knee and quietly puked onto the sand.
Doyle
Doyle came out of the bathroom towelling vigorously at her hair, saying, 'Jesus, that shit is tough to wash out.'
'Don't,' Sparks said. Sparks, greenish at the gills, had already puked twice helping Doyle get the thick, gloopy rings of blood out of her hair. She lit a cigarette and said, 'You ready to talk sense now?'
'What's to talk about?' Doyle sat on the other bed, head tilted to one side, still towelling. 'It's done.'
'He was a cop, Doyle.'
'A dirty cop. Filthy. According to Pyle, and these are just the ones he knows about, Niko had three guys knocked off getting set up here. This entirely separate to his facilitating a continent-wide dope op. Plus he was this close,' she held up a thumb and forefinger pressed together, 'to strangling me.'
'Yeah, but --'
'You'd rather it was me?'
Sparks tapping ash incessantly. 'So who was it pulled the trigger?'
'That's need-to-know, Sparks.'
'But it definitely wasn't Ray.'
'Ray was there, sure.' Doyle shrugged. 'We all were.'
'You're saying, no tales out of school.'
'Who knows we were there?' Doyle shrugged. 'Far as anyone knows, Niko was in Athens. Why would they even look for him here?'
'And you're sure he won't be found.'
'Someone knows where to look, has access to a submarine, they might get lucky.'
'So what happens now?'
'You go home, tell all the girls about this guy Ron you cradle-snatched.'
'What'll I tell Ted, he asks where you are?'
'Tell him I met a guy, a holiday romance, I'm thinking of staying away. Retiring.'
'So he can blame you for what happened Frank.'
'They pay for the privilege,' Doyle said, 'a sweet little redundancy package, they can say whatever they want.'
'It won't be the same without you,' Sparks said, wistful.
'That was the main problem,' Doyle said. 'It was always the fucking same.'
Melody
Mel dug down to the bottom of the Louis Vuitton to the pink bra, unfolded it and took out Ray's passports. Found the Israel one just as a tappity-tap came at her door.
'Coming,' she called, sucking in her belly to tuck the passport into her pants, that being one of the last places, she hoped, Ray'd want to look.
But it was Sleeps at the door, squeezed into a suit, saying, 'Madge told me where to find you. I can come back if it's a bad time.'
Mel held the door open. 'All I can offer you is coffee,' she said.
'That's okay, coffee'd be good right now. Black.'
Mel got the kettle going and then came and sat opposite him, Sleeps twitching his knees to one side to allow her get between the twin beds. 'Where's Rossi?' she said.
'Probably halfway to Crete, doing the breast-stroke. The wolf wasn't too happy to see him.'
'But he's okay?'
'Still in one piece.'
The kettle boiled. Mel made a couple of coffees and brought them over, sat facing him again, their knees almost touching. 'So what happened?' she said.
'Nothing much.'
'Where's Niko?'
'He's uh, gone.'
'Gone?'
'Gone.'
'Should I ask where he's gone?'
'This is good coffee,' Sleeps said. 'Is it instant?'
'Yeah. But the good instant.'
'I can believe it.' Sleeps sipped some more coffee, said, 'Uh, Mel? I just want --'
'There's something you should know, Gary.'
'What's that?'
'You're a nice guy. I mean, you're nice.'
'So I'm finishing last, that it?'
'That's not what I'm getting at. It's more to do with, um ...'
'You being in the family way?'
Mel stared. 'How'd you know?'
'I just guessed.'
'When?'
'It wasn't just one thing,' Sleeps said. 'It was gradual.'
'So why're you here?'
Sleeps shrugged. 'I got a proposal.'
'A proposal?'
'Not the marrying kind. The business kind.'
Mel, surprised to find herself a little disappointed, bought herself some time. 'Aren't they one and the same thing?'
'One step at a time, Mel. Okay?'
Karen
Rossi said, 'You never gave me a chance, girl. Even before I got out you believed I'd be the same as going in.'
Karen licked the ball of her thumb getting ready to count out sixty grand onto the toilet seat, the stash she'd ripped off when Rossi was inside, this being the deal Terry and Madge'd brokered, fair's fair. Karen perched on the edge of the bath. 'Believing it,' Karen said, 'because you were the exact same coming out twice before. A deadbeat waste of space.'
'Three's the charm.'
'Rossi, you took Anna's eye out with a fork. Charm that.'
'Okay, but she took my ear. Like it says in the Bible, an eye for, y'know, an ear.'
Karen put the money down and composed herself. 'Rossi,' she said, 'I pissed away ten years of my life on a miserable string of piss like you on the very dubious basis that you weren't at least my father, the bastard battered my mother to death, doing it slow --'
'Taking, yeah,' Rossi said, 'fourteen years to do it. I know. You think I don't know the difference between a woman and a hound?'
'It's the same principle,' Karen said. 'Cruel's cruel.'
'You're talking principles now? You rip off my stash, the Ducati, my fuckin .44, and you're lecturing me on ethics?'
'That was different.'
'See, Karen, it's always different when it's you. You don't see that?'
Karen, in the last week, had heard the same argument three ways, first from Madge, then Ray, now Rossi. And, okay, she had to admit she'd been pleasantly surprised Rossi'd stepped up for her with Niko, especially with an empty gun, no way Rossi was taking that kind of chance for anyone five years ago.
'You're saying you've changed,' she said, 'is that it?'
Rossi shrugged. 'Maybe not by as much as you need, but headed that way, sure. Smart enough,' he said, 'to ask for a second chance, you don't have any better offers coming in from Ray, the guy's running off with his pet cop.'
'A second chance?'
'A fourth chance, okay. Let's not get hung up on detail here, lose the romance.'
'You're tripping,' Karen said. 'Is that it? Show me your eyes.'
'I haven't had anything harder'n a beer in three days,' Rossi said. 'Ask Sleeps you don't believe me.' He said, 'This sober thing, I dunno, it's like a whole different kind of fucked up.'
Karen licked the ball of her thumb again, counted out the sixty gees. Picked up the bundle and handed it across.
'Not a chance,' she said. 'You kidding me? You were the last guy on earth, I'd rip off my own arm and beat you to death.'
Rossi tucked the bundle away, then shrugged. 'Can't be Mills and Boon every day, right? You take care, Dollface.'
He opened the door.
'Rossi?'
He paused, looked back. 'What?'
'This FARCO Terry's maybe thinking about backing. What's the deal there?'
Ray
'Just sit here hoping they won't come looking,' Pyle said, 'you're never gonna know when they'll come at you. Am I right?'
'You got balls,' Ray said. 'I'll give you that.'
'Me? I'll be the good guy, I'm worried about Niko. Hey, anyone seen him? He was due on the island, never showed.' He sucked some frappé through a straw, watched the ferry reverse in. 'I mean, who saw him here except us?'
'You think Johnny'll play ball?'
'I don't know, man. He does or he doesn't.'
'But you're not thinking of zipping him on the off-chance he mightn't.'
'I got a feeling, Ray, it's not Amsterdam, but the island life, I think Johnny'll adapt. You got the sun, good food, cute chicks ... '
'It wasn't enough for you.'
Pyle stood up, shouldered his duffel bag. 'Johnny hasn't been where I been.' He shook his head, then said, 'Y'know, I get back here, I'll be needing a guy can handle himself.'
'Appreciate the offer, man. I'll think about it.'
'Do that.' He held out his fist. Ray touched knuckles.
He ordered another latte and watched Pyle board the ferry, the engines churning the sea to foam. A delicate rosé-fingered sky, the sun stirring.
The ferry was halfway out into the bay when Doyle came strolling into the square, shades on, hair shining. Ray stood and waved until she saw him beckoning her on.
She stopped, put a hand on her hip. Crook'd a finger at him.
Ray shrugged and stood up, called the waitress. 'You mind if I get that latte to go?' he said.
Madge
Terry in the wing-backed armchair, the potted palm behind, nodded along while Mel carved shapes out of the air with her hands, the girl in full spate.
'I mean, we couldn't just do Brokeback again. Besides,' she said, glancing across at Sleeps, 'the guys are straight.' Sleeps nodded. 'So it'd be like Brokeback meets Thelma and Louise,' she said, 'maybe a touch of Butch and Sundance.'
'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot,' Sleeps said.
'But sexy.'
'So it's a buddy-buddy movie,' Terry said, 'without the touchy-feely crap.'
'We could do it that way,' Mel said. 'I mean, I'm seeing Col Farrell and Brad, we get picked up by one of the majors, get ourselves a proper budget. And Col's done Alexander, Brad the guy in Troy, walks around in a skirt all day polishing his pecs. So yeah, homoerotic is do-able, for sure.'
'But it wouldn't have to be.'
'Nothing has to be, Terry. It's a movie.'
Madge in the other wing-backed armchair had a sip of Cristal. 'This budget you're talking about. How far would a million-five get you?'
'About halfway up Brad's little toe. But, you had that kind of seed capital they call it, you'd open a lot of doors. Impress investors with your commitment, you're putting your own money on the line.'
'There's also,' Terry observed, 'the tax-breaks. Like, you put up the first million and a half, suck some people in, by the time it all gets washed out you've staked half a mill, maybe less. A million back before the first camera rolls.'
'You've done it?' Madge asked Terry.
'Not yet.'
'How come, if it's that easy?'
'I don't know,' Terry said. 'Maybe I've just been waiting for the right script to come along.'
'What's it called?' Madge asked Mel.
Mel cleared her throat and held up her hands like she was framing the title. 'Beautiful Losers,' she said.
'Nice,' Terry said. 'But you know what I like too? Crime Always --'
There came a knock at the door. Mel looked at Sleeps, who shrugged.
'Rossi and Karen,' Terry said, getting up, 'haggling the split.'
He opened the door. Two uniformed Greek cops stood there. One of them looked at the bellboy, standing to one side. The bellboy nodded.
'That's him,' he said, and tucked a twenty into his breast pocket.

