by Paul Slatter
Mazzi walked to the window and looked out. There was this guy working in the coffee shop across the road he’d seen earlier who was so hot and had the tightest shorts on. He turned back saying, “The girl just spent two years as a cocktail waitress at the one hotel in the world where every successful producer, agent, movie star, and director walks through and not one of them has picked up on this—but you did? You—the guy who only last week sold condominiums who’s now a world authority on beauty and talent? You know there’s this fit guy working across the road. Do you see me going over there and laying a six-month contract on him so I can see what’s inside his shorts?”
To which Patrick simply said, “Trust me.”
Anyway, it was beyond Mazzi now to get in a spat with the hired gun, even if he was part owner and had shares in Slave. Sebastian was the man to talk with and he had something he needed to get sorted out ASAP. So he said the words that had sold him over a thousand homes, “Mazzi, don’t be the guy who got left behind—never turn your back on something that other people just haven’t seen yet.”
Then he said, “Sebastian’s putting up the money for this picture Slave’s making. Dan’s got the lead, Marshaa’s signing with me and moving here just so as she can be in it—it’s that good. She wants to be a movie star.”
“Excuse me?” Hegan asked, his mindset suddenly changing. As much as he totally hated her with her long hair and better nails than his own, she was money in the bank and huge kudos. But still not wanting to be beaten, said, “We don’t need that slut around here.”
And without missing a beat, Sebastian walked into the room and said, “Marshaa’s had enough of Gill, said she’s always in bed when she calls, and now she’s told her she’ll have to use the coach instead of flying first class, so she’s coming here—she wants Patrick to represent her. Gill Banton’s going crazy, blaming me, saying I poached her, says I’m the one who invited him along to her party.”
Then Patrick piped up, “And the movie’s only going to cost us five million.”
“Us? You mean, me, Patrick. Me,” Sebastian said as he picked up his dog Fluffy and sat down on his favorite chair. He said it again, “You mean, me, Patrick—you want me to foot the five million?”
And Patrick answered, “It’s actually eight. Buffy’s doing the numbers and you’ll get the three back—off the government when it’s done. You’re going to love it.”
Sebastian sat there stroking his dog and looked to Mazzi who was staying silent. He looked at Patrick. The guy had come to them for a life makeover and already, just from being in his presence, they were getting one. Then just as he heard Patrick say, “You can’t put a price on quality.”
Sebastian said, “I haven’t even read the script, Patrick.”
Neither had Patrick—at least not properly. He had skim read it, of course, in the bar at the Wiltshire with one eye on the type and his other on Megan’s ass. He said, “It’s incredible, absolutely out of this world.”
“Why?”
Mazzi Hegan knew that, in Sebastian’s mind, the money was already in Patrick’s pocket for the piece of shit film he’d scraped off the floor in Hollywood—as Marsha’s signature to Slave was worth double. So he said, “What’s it about?”
“Oh it’s incredible,” Patrick piped up not even knowing the answer. “It’s about love, relationships, honesty and space—outer space.”
That’s it, he was remembering now, the bit in the space ship where they are trapped and the capsule is going to crash into the moon. He held up his hands and said, “Outer space and Inner space—the turmoil and beauty of young love and the unconscious emotional state one finds oneself in when confronted with one’s darkest fears.”
Mazzi Hegan wasn’t giving up. He walked back to the window to take another look at the coffee shop. The guy was there now, and bending over to boot. He carried on, “What the fuck does that mean?”
And just as Patrick was about to say ‘Trust me.’ Sebastian answered for him, “It means, Mazzi, we get Marsha up here instead of Gill Banton having her down there. So it’s a go.”
That and the fact you’ll have an excuse to chat with Chuck Chendrill every minute of the day for the next six months, Mazzi Hegan thought, but—for once—he kept his mouth shut. And he wasn’t wrong, as the first thing Sebastian did when he got back to his office was call Chendrill, saying, “Chuck it’s an emergency. We’ve just done a deal with Marshaa and I need to know Dan’s not going to be upset.”
And all he heard Chendrill say back was, “Dan’s fine with it.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah he’s good, Sebastian—don’t worry.”
“Good, can you come over and pick up a script we need him to read?”
“When?”
“Now, is that okay? Why? Where are you? Where’s Dan. Is he okay?”
Chendrill answered, “He’s fine, he’s in his room studying for his exams.”
Sebastian smiled. It was the answer he wanted to hear, and Chendrill knew it. Then Sebastian asked again, “Where are you—are you at the house?”
He was.
“Good, can you come over to the office and pick up the script?”
“You pay me to look after Dan, Sebastian, not run errands—you’ve got Belinda for that kind of stuff.”
And without having missed a beat, he heard Sebastian say, “Great, I’ll see you here in about half an hour then.”
Chendrill drove the Aston Martin along the road and headed into downtown, wondering if it was worth it—a grand a day plus car. Not really, if truth be told, but he was getting to hang out with Dan’s mother in the process—and had been doing just that in her bed when Sebastian had called. He did get the odd idiot to deal with, like the Punjabi warrior, even if the man did have the angle on him yesterday. And now Marsha was on the payroll, he thought, and that would bring to him paparazzi without a doubt, and stalkers, and the odd spat at a club and trips to and from the airport. He pulled the Aston up outside Slave’s offices and looked up to see Mazzi Hegan looking out of the window.
He reached the offices upstairs and heard Mazzi call out as he passed by, “Red and royal blue will never do baby.” And then heard Sebastian say as he entered his office, “He’s got a thing about your shirts and the Aston Martin, Chuck, he says the colors don’t blend.”
Chendrill looked down at his shirt and then at himself in the mirror by the door. The shirt had red and blue in it and yellow and green as well, so what was the problem? He said, “Don’t expect me to be picking Marshaa up at the airport. Life’s too short for that kind of work Sebastian.”
Sebastian stood and smiled, holding out his hand, “We’ve got Belinda on contract for that Chuck. You’re the best PI in town—that’s why we have you here, not to drive a taxi.” He reached down to the desk and handed Chendrill a newly printed script and said, “Could you ask Dan to read this? Patrick’s got him the lead and the director’s coming into town tomorrow to meet him.”
Chendrill nodded, “That’s it?”
“And can you make sure he’s here in the morning to meet him?”
“I thought I was a PI?”
“Oh you are Chuck, and a good one—we both know that. But could you just do me this little bitty favor, you see I’m having an early night tonight and if I know you’re there for me, then I’m going to sleep. Belinda does a great job, but she’s never the one who turns up to do the job—and I’ve heard the guy she sends has a thing about the garden.”
They were the same person, Chendrill thought, the same person. He said, “Belinda and the guy are the same person. Belinda’s a guy, not a girl.”
Sebastian almost believed him. Then he burst out laughing and said, “Oh Chuck, stop it dear, you had me going then didn’t you,” and walked out of the office. Chendrill heard Sebastian call out to Mazzi in the office next door, “Mazzi, Chuck’s getting me at it again, he is saying Belinda’s a man!” Then he came back in and, picking up his dog and sitting down, said in his perfect English acc
ent, “Would you like a biscuit?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Archall Diamond, as he liked to be called, stood at the back of his low-riding Mercedes with the dent in the roof and played with his gun. Rasheed was gone now and he was the man. He’d run the drugs now, he’d get that ecstasy shit from the guy who was putting himself through college making it and sell it in the clubs—except the commission rate was gonna get lower for them guys now ’cos he was in charge and if they didn’t like it, they was gonna go float.
And since Rasheed’s demise, he’d been around in his low rider with its duck pond roof and spoken to them all, telling them exactly this at every meeting in the back of a club or out in the street where they sold.
Rasheed took a third of what they made, and from now on, he was gonna take a fifth or they were gonna float and none had resisted. That’s how much respect he commanded.
Math had never been Archall Diamond’s strong point.
Now with his hands on the keys at Rasheed’s rented home that was now his own—so long as he kept up the rent—with its triple garage that now fit his low rider Mercedes, his truck, and his boat with room to spare, and with the bag full of cash he’d found under the sink, that wasn’t going to be a problem.
The bag full of money had been flowing well. His girlfriend was there with him now, as sexy as ever with her long legs and high heels, always looking to the sky and loving him more than ever now—and only him. All he needed to do was sort out that plastic Swahili-speaking wannabe Sikh to hand over those hard-on pills, which would be in by now, and the low-end narcotics in town would be sewn up.
He said to his girl Nina, “That guy, you remember his name, you met him once. The one with the turban couldn’t speak Punjabi, claimed he was English then said he was from Africa?”
And just to piss him off, Nina said, “The good looking one?”
Whatever, Archall Diamond thought, the guy couldn’t even drive. Looking back at her while she kept looking at the sky, he said, “Is he still around?”
He was. A friend of hers who worked at the cinema was seeing him on occasions, liked it because he’d let his hair down and could go all night and then she’d call and tell Nina how many times she’d come—when Nina hadn’t herself for a while unless she was on her own or with the guy who’d disappeared, who’d she been waiting for forever, but who had simply vanished. That guy, who had promised her the world, who she’d felt loving her, listening to his words—words she had been waiting for so long to hear—and then nothing. And now here she was, still with this prick, living in his old boss’s house because Archall had grabbed the keys from his pocket as the guy lay there dying at the side of the road and had moved his boat into the garage on the same night.
She should have listened to Rasheed when he’d told her to go to Bollywood and start singing and get away from all this. She had the looks, she had those legs that went on for a mile that guys loved to look at when Archall took her to the hockey game.
She said, “He’s probably loving some white chick, that’s his thing.”
Archall thought about it for a moment. He’d done that just once before and didn’t like it. The girl’s skin was too white and went red when he squeezed it, and her pussy smelled to boot. Not like his girls who kept themselves clean down there and tasted of saffron not salmon when they made him eat it. He said, “I need to speak with him. Call your friend and get his number.”
“You don’t have it?” Nina asked, not wanting to hear about the guy anymore, jealous that her friend was getting it properly and her not.
Then he said, “He’s got these pills that make your dick hard and I’m going to start selling them for him whether he likes it or not.”
And hearing that, she made the call.
******
Rann Singh sat in the front room of his apartment and stared into the open box full of his own specialty hard-on pills he’d traveled halfway around the world to buy.
Reaching in, he opened a packet and stared at the contents, the pills slightly bigger now than the ones he’d tried out on the Irishman’s girl and her friend—or whatever they were. Fuck, he was tempted to pop one right now and call that blonde bitch from the cinema he’d been taking to pound town ever since she’d given him the photos of that fuckhead realtor doing his thing.
He looked at the box and began to count the packets, which took a while—thirty-thousand packets in all with six in each. Five bucks a pill would make him a million bucks Canadian, enough to get the fuck out of here and to the other side of the world to buy back the ranch that looked out to the mountains for his grandad. And then he’d call him and say, ‘you got it grandad, our Sikh god Guru Nanak has been looking out for us because I’ve got the farm back and you can come home now,’ and they’d love him for it. And that’s where he and his grandparents would live, speaking the Swahili he knew so well, away from the life he knew now with its back alleys and sad men who he was helping to see the light.
Then the phone rang and he said to the blonde girl with the almost pure white skin, “I need you to come over here so as I can try some stuff out.”
But when he opened the door, it was Archall Diamond and his girl Nina. Archall standing out there in the corridor letting Rann see the diamond in his front tooth and his gun in his waist band. Rann saying to him, “You get that roof fixed on your car yet?”
******
They sat there in the living room with the box of hard-on pills in between them both and Nina standing out there on the balcony looking up again to the sky. Rann said, “You know who made these? Not some fucking prick with a how-to guide he got off the net like you’ve been using. These are made by a scientist from New Zealand with a degree in chemistry. They ain’t full of shit like the stuff you sell on the street. There’s just the right amount of Sildenafil to get you hard as a rock and some herbs mixed in to make you feel like a million dollars. Take one and your dick’ll get so big you’ll think you were one of those retro porn stars from the seventies.”
Archall Diamond thought about the porn he’d watched from back then, the white guys with the huge hammers and the women with big teeth and bigger muffs. Then, keeping it real, he said, “You wanna sell them, I’m taking a sixth of what you make. Rasheed used to take a third off the top, but he’s gone so now I’m in charge and the cost of business around here for you guys has just gone up. The rest of the dealers pay more than a third, they pay a fifth, but as you fucked up the roof on my ride, then you are going to pay me a sixth of what you make, that or I’ll take the lot now and float ya.”
“Float me, what like throw me out the window?”
Archall Diamond shook his head and said, “No I don’t like guys that fly. I’m talking about sticking you’se in an inner tube with some chains around ya feet and setting you’se loose on a rip that sends you out to sea so you can drop down somewhere and feed some of the crabs that your whitey girlfriends like to eat when some prick takes ‘em to a fancy restaurant downtown. Just like I did to some guy the other night when he came sniffing around.”
“You took him to dinner?”
“No, I made him the dinner. There’s a difference.”
Then he nodded to Nina out there on the balcony that used to have a recliner on it and carried on, “She’s looking for this guy we used to know when we were kids. The fucker’s supposed to be flying in unsuspected at the fireworks out on English bay, was gonna be wearing one of those special suits and come out the clouds, circle around for a bit like some fucking giant prehistoric eagle, then swoop in and buzz the crowd, scare the shit out of em all and let everyone know who he is, then retire. Everyone knows it and are waiting to see it happen, but then them is gonna be disappointed, ’cos that guy he got himself floated. So if he got floated and he a Punjabi, then don’t think no wannabe Punjabi ain’t gonna get floated also.”
Rann nodded. He got the picture, kind of, and wondered if he should just punch the moron in the throat right now and be done with it or hear him out. H
e said, “Because these ain’t no ordinary tablets. Rasheed and I had a deal set up before he passed control onto you by getting himself killed. It was ten dollars a pop. You still up for that? Or shall we go and try to see if either you or your girl out there can make me float like her boyfriend—or if I can make you fly right now out that window like her boyfriend.”
And shaking his head, still trying to sound tough, Archall Diamond said, “I don’t pay Rasheed’s rates, I set my own. You take em or you float, your choice—you get five dollars less a tenth for setting it up and that’s more than the crowd’s paying, but like I said, you fucked up the roof of the Mercedes, so that’s the deal.”
Then, trying it on, Rann said, “You saying I’m only getting eight a tablet now less a tenth when they’ll sell for twenty dollars a pop and I already done a deal with Rasheed, only five dollars a tablet. You gotta be kidding?
And Archall said in his best gangster voice. “I got the cash in the Mercedes—take it or float.”
So with the math working out to just under ten times what Rasheed had offered, Rann took the deal and in his mind was already on his way to Kenya with eight hundred thousand dollars in cash. And holding up his hand to shake on it, Archall Diamond raised his too and pulled a Taser out of nowhere with the other and stuck it into Rann’s chest, sending 50,000 volts into him. Then, pulling his gun with the other, he looked down to Rann, momentarily paralyzed on the floor; as two more Punjabis dressed like cage fighters burst in, he followed up his offer by saying, “But ’cos you disrespected me like you did with smashing up the Mercedes, you not getting anything till I see you’se with ya head shaved.”
With his right arm feeling as heavy as a rock, Rann Singh watched as the first of Archall Diamond’s thugs came at him across the living room, jumping at Rann with a mistimed karate kick that hit Archall in the back, knocking the gun from his hand and the Taser from his other.
