“Well, the git here,” Hamo said, “we can take back to London and dump in an alley in Soho. I’ll bet you he’s just a thug for hire Pye picked up. Probably doesn’t know too much about the rest. He’ll know that I’ll be keeping my eye on him, so I think that neutralizes him.”
I turned to Pye. “Does that sound good to you, Pye? Don’t answer, just nod your head.” Pye did so. I sat back down on the kitchen chair, bringing myself down to his level. “Now what about you? You know, the proper blow to your head, a blow located along the strictest of scientific methods, could fairly incapacitate you, without killing you. Just the proper amount of brain damage and you could still function, but you would have very little memory left—and absolutely no sense of self. Which has benefits as your self is not one I would think one would want much of a sense of.”
“Look—”
“Shut up!” I screamed it into Pye’s face, spraying spit. “Do not speak to me! I’m angry. Have some Goddamn sensitivity to that!”
I stood up and calmed myself. “Sorry, gentlemen. Some errant protein in my brain, I suppose. Well, I’m at a loss. Do you have any suggestions?”
Roee and Hamo considered the matter, both studying Pye intensely, which fairly unnerved him. Finally Hamo gave up with a gesture of defeat, but Roee stroked Pye’s face and said, “He looks like he needs a shave.”
I looked and confirmed the fact. “Yes, indeed, he does, but I’m not really concerned about his appearance right now.”
“Nonetheless,” Roee said as he picked up Pye, put him on his feet, pulled his right arm around to his back and yanked up. Pye grunted and squealed simultaneously. “He’s going to have a shave. Where’s the bathroom?”
Pye said nothing. His lips were literally sealed with fear.
“Would you please give him permission to speak?” Roee requested.
“Speak, Pye.”
“Upstairs,” Pye squeaked.
Roee roughly pushed Pye forward, out of the room, into the hall and up the stairs. Hamo and I followed. When we all got into the bathroom, Roee let Pye go then trained his Browning Hi-Power 9mm automatic at him. “Get out of your clothes. Except for underwear,” Roee said.
Pye did so. He wore boxer shorts with real boxers on them.
“Shave,” Roee said.
Pye reached onto a shelf and brought down an electric razor.
“Oh, no,” Roee said and slapped the electric razor out of Pye’s hand with the Browning, startling Pye. “No electrics. Real men don’t use electrics. Don’t you have a real razor?”
“You—you mean a straight razor?” Pye asked in confusion.
“No, a safety razor will do. I’ll grant you that.”
“No, I don’t use one. But—uh, but my, my…”
“Paramour.” I filled in the gap.
“He has a paramour?” Hamo asked, delighted over the idea.
“That’s what he uses this place for.”
“Oh,” Hamo said. “You know you get a discount with a paramour.”
We had to stop and stare at Hamo again. We just had to.
“She probably has one for her legs. In the tub.”
Indeed she did. Hamo retrieved the disposable pink, slick looking instrument and handed it to Pye.
“I—I don’t have any shaving cream.”
“Be a man,” Roee instructed. “Shave without it.”
Pye looked at him, but then started to do as he had been told. He turned on the hot water.
“No water!” Roee made it clear.
“What?”
“Shave!”
Pye began to shave. It was not smooth going. Roee moved real close to observe. Just as Pye was scraping the razor down his right cheek, Roee bumped heavily into his arm.
“Ouch!” Pye exclaimed. There was a small, bloody slice on his right cheek.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Roee said. “Here, I’ve got something for that.” Out of his pocket he brought a little plastic tube of clear liquid.
“Winkle water!” I exclaimed.
“Winkle Water,” Roee confirmed. “I happened to have gotten to Petey just when he was having a two for one sale. Thought it might come in handy.”
“Very prescient of you.”
“Thanks.”
“Wh—what’s that stuff?”
“The stuff that dreams are made upon,” I said as Roee applied the Winkle Water to Pye’s cheek. Pye looked at all of us with disbelief firmly lodged in his beady eyes. I suppose it had all gotten a bit surreal. Then he collapsed. Roee and Hamo grabbed him on the way down to make sure he didn’t hit his head on the basin.
“Another instance of the mysterious disease,” I said.
“One in L.A. One in London.”
“This is going to keep them up late at the Center for Disease Control.”
“Think we ought to have Petey give them a call.”
“Probably wouldn’t hurt. They’re a bit busy with other matters right now. Wouldn’t want to divert their resources.”
“Would someone explain Winkle Water to me, please?” Hamo asked.
We did, as we went about the house, straightening things up.
“Who do you think will discover him?” Hamo finally asked.
“Well, when he doesn’t show up at the office, I would think his paramour might think to look out here. Other than that, let’s hope he has a housecleaner or a nosy neighbor. There’s not much more we can do.”
“And he’ll be out for four weeks?”
“About that.”
“Being found here in this love nest is going to be great fodder for the tabloids,” Hamo said. “Probably ruin his career.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m glad.”
Then we stuffed George in the boot of Hamo’s car and drove the A1M back to London.
Chapter Thirteen
Cast Your Feta To The Wind
“When you left my bed last night you were more handsome than when you entered it. Now look at you.”
Lydia Corfu, in a black velvet suit over a stark white blouse with shockingly large collars and cuffs, stood in front of me in Hamo Thornycroft’s office examining the various “Badges of Courage” I had been awarded early that morning. A swollen and split lip, now nicely stitched thanks to Roee’s battlefield first aid skills; a rather nasty bruised area around my right cheek; a scratch down my left, unfortunately not bad enough to someday become a romantic scar, and the somewhat ragged and singed condition of my hair at the back of my head.
“A banker did this to you?” Lydia said, incredulous.
“I never could get a firm grasp on Economics.”
“If a banker is going to do this to you, what happens when we face an ex-gunrunner and drug dealer?”
“You have every right to pull out.”
“What? You think I’m one of your American women?” The examination over she sat and sipped from a hot cup of coffee and attacked a bowl of peanuts Hamo had conscientiously provided.
“American women can be very tough.”
“Yeah, yeah, back in the pioneer days. Plowing the north forty while pregnant. Pulling the wagon train themselves when the mule died. Yeah, I read all that, but your modern American woman, she spends all her days reading nothing but self-help books. Books telling her either how to be more feminine so she can catch a man, or more feminist so she can slice his balls off. She prostrates herself in front of guru books trying to figure out how to get self-esteem, or she covers herself with crystals while howling and running like a wolf while trying to get in tap with some universal consciousness, which probably doesn’t have a decent thought in its head anyway. No, no, no! Life sits there before you, beautiful and ugly; wonderful and awful; comforting and frightening. You do not need self-help. You only need to help yourself! Anybody who has to read a self-help book has very little self, and is way beyond help.”
“So you want to stay in the game?” Roee asked. He and Hamo were in the room with us.
“Sure, why not? But it looks to me that we c
an’t play it right away. Do you think I want to be represented by a lawyer that looks like shit?”
Roee and Hamo both turned towards me. “He is not a pleasant sight, that’s true,” Roee said.
“Scary looking. I wouldn’t expose him to pregnant women,” Hamo added.
“Well, I have put us on a bit of a tight schedule,” I reminded.
“How much time do you think we could spare?” Roee asked.
I thought about that. Don Gulden and Robert Pye would both be out for about four weeks. I was comfortable with that. We needed to get to Sara Hutton, get her comfortable with us, and hope for an invite into the Communion of the Golden Arse. Anything less than four weeks meant rushing the process. Unless….
“I suppose I could take a week off to heal up a little if you go in as an advance guard,” I said to Roee.
“Make the first foray. Contact Sara Hutton, explain the situation, and tell her I’m there on a preliminary basis to judge her interest. If she’s interested, then it will be worth our time to bring my partner and Lydia Corfu to Los Angeles.”
“Exactly. Meanwhile, I’ll convalesce at home, taking it easy and—”
“You will convalesce at my villa on Corfu. You can’t go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles is about wounds, not healing. You need the Mediterranean sun on your face. You’ll heal much faster.”
The suggestion had an immediate appeal.
“Will you be my nurse, bucking up my spirit with your compassion and giving me a reason to live?”
“No, but I have a seventy-seven year old housekeeper who does wonders with Aloe Vera. She has no compassion though. Do not do as she asks, and she spits at you.”
“I’ve always been an excellent patient. Haven’t I, Roee?”
“My religion cautions me from bearing false witness.”
“Really?” Hamo said. “My religion cautions me from witnessing false bears.”
To look at Hamo and wonder was all that we could do.
“Well, a week in Corfu sounds wonderful. As long as you’ll be there,” I said to Lydia.
“I do have a TV station to run, Nico.”
“Nico?” Roee wondered.
“Nickname.” I said by way of answer.
“No,” Lydia said, a smile carved from evil delight on her lips, “Pet name.”
*
Earlier that day we had gotten back to the Savoy at about eight AM. I was exhausted. More than I had been for quite a while. I had wanted to go straight to bed and sleep, forgetting about my wounds, but Roee, of course, would have none of that. He nursed me—well. Then he made me take a scalding hot bath and threw three slugs of Dewar’s down my gullet. Only then did he allow me to climb into bed, making me put on a pair of his cotton pajamas first. I usually sleep in only a t-shirt.
“You need to pamper yourself, feel like a little boy home sick from school. Consider it a form of homeopathic medicine.”
“My mother never gave me whisky when I was home sick. You’ve improved upon mother.”
“Thank you.”
Now that I was in bed, of course, I didn’t feel sleepy. I felt talkative. “Should I allow myself to feel like an idiot?”
“Why?”
“I walked into a trap.”
“It happens.”
“Can’t let it happen too often, or we could be out of business.”
“Let it be a lesson to you then.”
“Possibly.”
The intoxicating warmth was just beginning to spread out from my stomach, making me feel as if I could defy gravity. Must have been Roee’s intention. He wanted me to float off into dreamland. I was just beginning to like the idea, even the sense of vulnerability that came with it, when, in the middle of closing the drapes, Roee was stopped by a thought. “I’m also wondering if there are not other things to learn here,” he said.
“Such as?”
“Pye. If he’s this tough on competitors, what must he be like if you’re late on your credit card bill?”
“You think there’s something more there?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, but I can’t figure out what. The cover seems to have held. He was going to murder Elsworth Henderson, not the Fixxer. That much seems clear, but a banker murdering? After all, it’s just business.”
I seemed to have been tethered to the ground. For suddenly, although still floating, I was yanked back, couldn’t go any higher. “I was still high, but…. “He said that too.”
“Who? Said what?”
“‘It’s just business.’ Pye said that when he was requesting our sources of financing. He said something about it not being like he was asking me to reveal something important, like, ‘state secrets.’ It was, ‘just business.’ You know, it occurs to me, Roee, that that’s probably the most pernicious phrase in the English language. It’s used to excuse so much, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is. Roee, what binds society together?”
“Fixx, you need your sleep.”
“Answer my question. What binds society together? What has always bound society together? At least for the last ten to twelve thousand years or so?”
“I don’t know. Common beliefs. Religion, on occasion.”
“Roee, no disrespect to your own, but religion only binds the like-minded together. I mean all of society, all of society in the mundane, the real. Nothing exulted.”
“A sense of community, then.”
“But where does the sense of community come from?”
Roee shrugged. “Common needs. Common aspirations. Common desires.”
“Well, as most individual needs, aspirations and desires often clash with one another, the most common one, I suppose, is the need to live well, to prosper, maybe something as basic as feeding yourself, and your family, if you have one. Hard to do that all by yourself unless you’re lucky enough to be the sole occupant of an island with plenty of exploitable flora and fauna.”
“How about political systems?”
“Same problem as religion, Roee. If anybody ought to know that, it’s you and me.”
“I’m at a loss, then. Why don’t I give this some thought while you get some sleep.”
“It’s Business, Roee! Business binds society together, Trade and Commerce. It binds us together because I cannot, or do not choose to make my own—” I looked for an inspiration. I found I was lying under it. “Blanket, for example. So I pay somebody to provide this blanket to me, and he paid somebody to ship the blanket to him, and he paid someone to weave the blanket, and he paid someone for the wool from which to weave it.”
“Your narration reminds me of those wonderful 16mm films we used to watch in school on the kibbutz—although we did try to be fairly self-sufficient.”
“You obviously didn’t pay attention.”
“No. I think I was passing mash notes to Teddy. He was cute.”
“Business, Roee. The good old profit motive. Individual, selfish needs that, paradoxically, bind everybody together in a society. Not family, not a sense of community, not religion, not political systems, not kingdoms, not nations, nothing like that at all, but, ‘just business.’ The simple day-to-day trading of basic needs for civilized existence. That is what separates us from anarchy. It is the core, the essence of human society. Yet we have talked ourselves into believing that business is somehow exempt from the natural human considerations of fair play. We demand that our children learn the—what?—the rules of the road. We demand values in our families, morality among our religions, and ethics among our politicians, but when it comes to business, everything’s fair game instead of fair play. It’s competition, it’s not personal, it’s just business. And yet if business is the binding element of society, then nowhere else should basic morality be in evidence in sentiment—and in evidence in fact. Especially nowadays.”
“Fixxer, haven’t you always told me, much to my protest, that the universe is amoral.”
“Yes, the universe is amoral, Roee, but that doesn’t mean w
e have to be.”
“Maybe you should stick to vodka,” Roee said.
“So, this takes us back to the original question. Could a banker, in the heat of spirited competition, murder to further his goals? I can’t find an argument that would deny all possibility of such an occurrence. Can you?”
“Sad to say—no.”
That settled, my body demanded its due. “Damn, I’m tired.”
“Mental exertion, Fixx. It’s the most exhausting kind.” Roee said as he finished closing the drapes, tucked me in, and turned out the lights.
*
Of the seven days I spent at Lydia’s villa in Kassiópi on the island of Corfu, the Mediterranean sun, whose healing properties I was supposedly there for, managed to make an appearance on only three. Which is one more than Lydia made. It was her TV station that kept Lydia away, as she had predicted. It was the fact that Corfu is the wettest location in Greece, with not much less yearly rainfall than London, and the fact that it was, after all, midwinter, that seemed to have deterred the sun. I wasn’t that disappointed. The sun as an exception rather than a rule has always been my preference.
Kassiópi, a holiday town without quite being a tourist one, looks out across the Ionian Sea towards Albania. It’s a favorite spot to build villas. Lydia’s was a wedding present from her shipping tycoon husband who himself had never been to the place. It was all white and sleek and modern with every possible convenience, luxury, and extravagance. It was built on a hill just above the town, a long, narrow building with large windows, and a generous terrace facing the sea to the Northeast, and duplicate features on the opposite side facing the ascent of Mount Pandokrator to the Southwest. The views were of the blue or grey of the sea and the green of the land; the white and dusty red of the town buildings and their roofs, and the now and then rolling black of rain clouds, those coming in from the sea and those gathered to huddle around the peak of the mountain. The spikes of cypress trees appeared everywhere, tall and straight, as if on duty.
Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army Page 17
