by Hugh Fraser
The cold shower clears my head. As I dry myself, I notice that the tiles on the walls are almost the same pale blue colour as the ones in my bathroom at home, and I wonder how things are there. Georgie and her boy-friend Graham were staying at my house when I left. When they arrived, I was shocked to see how thin and listless Georgie was. Graham told me she’s been working obsessively on her thesis in Cambridge and refusing to stop for meals. I tried to talk to her about why she wasn’t eating, but she refused to engage with me. I nearly cancelled the trip, but Martin gave me a hard time and threatened to put it about that I’d lost it, so I filled the fridge with food and told Graham to look after her and not let her work too hard. I suddenly need to know that she’s all right.
I dry myself, dress quickly and walk through to the reception desk. The man who checked me in is now slumped in his chair reading a newspaper. I point at the payphone on the wall and tell him I want to call London. He has just enough English to understand that I want the dialling code and a lot of change. He finds the phone book and shows me the code. I feed coins into the machine and dial. After some clicking and crackling, I hear a distant ringing tone, and eventually Graham answers.
I push more coins in and say, ‘Graham, it’s Rina.’
‘Oh … Hello.’
‘How are things?’
‘Well, er …’
Graham is a Divinity student. He’s a sweet boy with a fine intellect, but he’s not the world’s greatest communicator.
‘Can I talk to Georgie?’
‘Well, um …’
‘You’re very faint, Graham. Can you speak up?’
‘Oh, right, sorry.’
‘Let me talk to Georgie.’
‘She’s not here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s been taken into hospital.’
‘Hospital? Why?’
‘She collapsed last night and I called an ambulance and they’re keeping her in.’
My head swims. I grip the receiver and push my forehead into the wall.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Malnutrition, they said.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I tried to make her eat but she just wouldn’t, she’d take a mouthful and not be able to swallow it and say she felt sick. I tried soup and everything, but she couldn’t swallow. Then last night, I went into the bathroom and she was standing in front of the mirror, with no clothes on, looking at herself and I asked her if she was all right and she turned to me and then she just fell down on the floor. I couldn’t wake her so I phoned for an ambulance.’
‘Did she come round?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank God you were there.’
‘I wasn’t sure …’
‘You did the right thing. How are they treating her?’
‘There’s a tube thing that goes into her mouth and they’ve restrained her arms so that she can’t …’
I visualise her being force-fed and I want to scream. At least they are keeping her alive.
Graham says, ‘When are you coming back?’
I fight the urge to smash the phone and decapitate the receptionist, who’s looking at me as if he’s never seen a woman before.
I breathe deeply and say, ‘I’m in a remote part of the world, and flights aren’t frequent, so it might take a couple of days, but I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.’
‘Right.’
‘Can you stay with her, Graham?’
‘Oh, absolutely. I’m just going in to see her now.’
‘Where is she?’
‘The Royal Free.’
‘Take care of her.’
• • •
To hell with Lee and his tracking devices, I’m going to get to an airport, steal a passport and get on a flight right now. I knock on the counter and ask the receptionist for a map. He finds one and I spread it out on the counter and check the route to Mexico City. It looks like a day’s fast drive. I fold the map and walk towards the car under the dazzling sun. I turn the key in the lock and get a good burn from the handle as I open the door.
As I sit on the hot seat, an arm goes round my neck and hard metal presses into my temple. In the mirror, I can see Guido, with a black eye patch, smirking at me. I twist round and try to grab the gun, but he jumps over onto the front seat, takes hold of my face and jams the gun against my temple.
‘OK, fucking bitch, you give me your gun now,’ he says.
‘It’s underneath the car.’
‘You get it, and you don’t fuck with me. OK?’
‘OK.’
Guido pockets his gun and gets out of the car. He opens the door for me and, as I move, he puts his hand on his pocket and fixes me with his good eye.
‘You don’t fuck,’ he says.
‘I thought you knew that by now,’ I say.
He looks at me with utter loathing and says, ‘Yeah, you funny fucking bitch. You get gun.’
I crawl under the car, rip off the tape and take hold of the gun. I reach out, grab Guido’s ankle and smash his leg against the side of the car. He falls down and I roll out, land my full weight on him, get a hold on his neck and hit him in the face. As he goes limp beneath me, a military jeep on the far side of the parking lot starts up, surges towards us and skids to a stop inches away. Through clouds of dust, I see four men with guns get out and surround us. I stand up, throw the gun down and raise my hands.
One of the men grabs Guido by the hair, pulls him to his feet and bundles him into the back of the jeep. The passenger door on the far side opens and a short figure wearing a leather flying helmet and a white T-shirt steps down, walks round the front of the jeep, and stands in front of me. The fabric of the T-shirt strains against a rippling landscape of bulging muscle and a pair of large, udderish breasts. She’s about as broad as she’s tall and the face that glowers at me from under the flying helmet is ugly enough to leave an orangutan suicidal. The face is bulbous and swollen, with pitted skin like ancient varnished oak, black eyes beneath brows as dark as crows’ wings, a broad flattened nose and lips like two car tyres lying on top of one another. When the lips stretch into a smile and then open to emit a dry laugh, exposing a graveyard of rotting teeth, I expect a plume of bile to spew forth.
Her laugh rattles on for a moment, then she looks me up and down, turns to the men and says, ‘Hey, it’s my twin sister!’
The men laugh and she holds out a horny hand. We shake and she says, ‘OK London, gimme your keys. We need to talk.’
I hand the car keys to her and she throws them to one of the men, nodding towards the jeep. As I get into the rear seat, I see the receptionist closing the front door of the motel very slowly and pulling down a window blind. Muscle woman gets in beside me and the jeep pulls out of the parking lot with my car following.
As we accelerate onto the highway, she turns to me and says, ‘I’m Carmela.’
I look straight ahead and ignore her.
‘It’s cool, honey. We’re on the same side,’ she says.
She’s probably mid-thirties and although she’s clearly Hispanic, or maybe Indian, her American accent tells me she’s not local. We drive into Monterrey. The heat is intense, and a smell like burnt kippers soaked in urine is coming off Miss Universe. The mid-morning traffic hoots and weaves around us as we reach the centre and cross a large square. We turn into a side street between high sided white buildings and pull over. I am escorted along the narrow pavement, through a wooden door and up three flights of stairs into a small sitting room with a brown leather sofa and two armchairs around a low table. A ceiling fan turns slowly, barely disturbing the trapped air.
Carmela indicates an armchair and says, ‘You want a beer? Coffee?’ I shake my head and she dismisses the men and sits in the armchair opposite me. She takes off the flying helmet, releasing a cloud of jet black hair that has the buoyancy and shiny texture of a nylon fright wig from some novelty shop. She uses both hands to try and flatten it down.
‘Bet you wish you never came, huh?’ sh
e says.
I say nothing. She opens a cigarette box on the table, takes one and pushes the box towards me. As she picks up the lighter, I consider attacking her while she’s distracted, but although there aren’t many people who frighten me, I might reconsider my chances against this one.
She exhales smoke, leans back in her chair and says, ‘He stitched you up pretty good, huh?’
I wait a moment before I say, ‘What do you want?’
‘I want to tear out Lee Master’s asshole and make him eat it.’ She gives me a reptilian smile and adds, ‘You want to give him his balls for dessert?’
I say nothing.
She leans towards me and looks into my eyes. ‘OK, London. Here’s the deal. Guido’s mine and he’s told me the plan for you to set up Manuel for Lee. I want both those bastards, and you want out and back home. So, you go with Lee’s plan and get the deal together with Manuel. You give me where and when it’s going down, I join the party, I get Lee and Manuel and you get home.’
She’s completely repulsive and more animal than human, but there’s something about her that makes me believe her. Even if I can get away from her, my chances of solo escape are slim at best.
I say, ‘Why do you want Lee?’
‘He has agents woven into my operation and I need to know who they are. He also knows too much about a whole lot of stuff that I’m into.’
‘Manuel?’
‘He fucked me with the authorities. It’s routine shit, but I have to kill him anyways.’
‘To encourage …’
‘Right. Also, I pick up his business, which is cool.’
‘So why not just kill him?’
‘Too noisy with the amount of protection he carries. This way, it’s quiet and I get them both.’
She stubs out her cigarette and flexes her neck from side to side until it gives a loud click.
‘I need to work out.’
She stands, rolls her shoulders back and forth and says, ‘You ready to do this thing or you want to spend a couple months in my cellar?’
‘How do I get home without Lee?’
‘Easy. I give you a new passport when it’s done and you step on a plane.’
‘How do I know you won’t kill me?’
‘I sell to London. You could be good for me there. Besides, you’re too beautiful.’
I try to rid myself of a nauseating thought picture as I remind myself that Lee will turn me in without doubt when the deal is done, and that Manuel may decide to kill me too. La Grotesque here is looking like my best option.
I say, ‘I go on to Manuel’s with Guido and we communicate through him?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know he isn’t going to tell Manuel?’ I ask.
‘He’s mine.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Manuel killed his sister.’
‘What if Manuel refuses the deal?’
‘He won’t. He’s a greedy son of a bitch and he lost a few fields a while back.’
‘I want to see the passport before I go.’
‘We’ll get that started.’
She opens the door and speaks to someone in the corridor. She turns back and says, ‘They’ll come take your picture and get the details they need to get it together. You want to work out while you wait?’
I decline and watch her overdeveloped thigh muscles rubbing against each other as she waddles out of the room. Minutes later a wizened old man in a cream linen suit arrives carrying a camera and a tripod. He plants the tripod in front of the window and mounts the camera on top of it. He smiles at me and points at a spot on the floor in front of the camera. I move into position and he clicks the shutter a couple of times. Then he hands me a pen and a sheet of paper.
‘Name. Address. Date of your birth please,’ he says.
I decide to be Sarah Collins from Wolverhampton and knock a couple of years off my age for good measure. I hand the pen and paper to him. He smiles at me again, picks up the camera and tripod and leaves.
I sit back in the armchair and wait. After a while the door opens and Guido walks in. He takes the seat that Carmela vacated, gives me his habitual look of loathing and says, ‘You don’t do what she say, she kill you.’
‘I know.’
‘She tougher than all the men.’
‘Really?’
‘I know her in East LA. She one mean bitch.’
‘I get it.’
We sit in silence. I think about poor Georgie lying in a hospital bed, and wonder how the hell I’m going to shake off Carmela, as well as Lee, Manuel and the Texas Police, and get back to her. The door opens and the old boy in the linen suit comes in and hands me a passport. It looks and feels exactly like the real thing. He offers me a pen. I hesitate a moment and then sign the passport as Sarah Collins. The old boy stands smiling as if waiting for my opinion. I nod to show my appreciation and he looks pleased and leaves.
Guido takes the passport from me and says, ‘We need to go.’
The door opens and Carmela enters, wearing a pink bathing suit.
I look away from the nauseating sight of tumescent muscle crawling with swollen veins. Sweat drips from her chin and her elbows, making pools on the wooden floor. She wipes her face with a towel and I retreat slightly as she approaches. She turns to Guido, takes the passport from him and looks first at it, then at me.
‘We cool?’
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘See you at the shindig.’
She leaves and Guido shows me out of the door and down the stairs to the street. We get into the car and I attempt to follow Guido’s increasingly hysterical directions as we penetrate the cut and thrust of Monterrey’s morning traffic. He eventually leads us out of the city and onto the highway that will take us past Mexico City to Manuel’s fortified mansion in the hills north of Acapulco. After a while I ask Guido if he wants to drive. He shakes his head and raises the gun he’s holding to remind me that he’s in control.
The highway is straight and fast and the mountains on either side make a jagged horizon beneath the deep blue sky. Country music wafts comfortably from a Texas radio station. By early evening, we’re beyond Mexico City and taking the exit from Highway 95 for the final approach to Manuel’s place, climbing up the mountain road.
As the house comes into view above us I look across at Guido and say, ‘Did you lose that eye?’
‘No.’
‘Will it be OK?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’ll know better next time.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘No, fuck you, you stupid little dwarf!’
He swings the gun at me. I stamp on the brake and he lurches forward and hits his head on the windscreen. I grab the gun from his hand, smash it into his face, open the passenger door and kick the ignorant pig out onto the road.
I drive the last couple of miles, stop in front of the wrought iron gates and wait. A side gate opens and a guard with an AK 47 walks slowly towards the car. I wind down the window.
‘I want to see Manuel.’
14
Little Richard’s screaming out Lucille as I go down the steps to Claire’s, and I can see her jiving with Sammy through the window. I knock and she twirls round, sees me and comes to the door to let me in. We go in her bedroom and she turns the record player down. I say hello to Sammy and he offers me a fag.
‘You know I don’t,’ I say.
‘Yeah, of course,’ he says and lights one up himself.
Claire takes one from his packet and says, ‘What about me then?’
Sammy laughs and lights her up as well. He turns to me and says, ‘Did you see my new motor?’
‘That old wreck that’s parked outside?’ I say.
‘That’s a fucking good car, that is. Morris Eight. One of the best cars on the road.’
Claire says, ‘Hop off down the pub, Sam, and I’ll see you later.’
‘I thought we was going out for a drive?’ says Sammy.
‘I want to talk to
Rina about something.’
‘About what?’
‘Never you mind, you nosey sod.’
‘Who are you calling …’
Claire takes a ten bob note out of a drawer and waves it in front of his face.
‘Now you be a good boy and toddle off down the pub, and we’ll see you later.’
Sammy takes the ten bob note off her and says, ‘You robbed a bank or something?’
‘Yeah. Now piss off before I change my mind.’
Sammy puts on his coat and combs his Brylcreemed hair. He turns the back of his head to us.
‘How’s my DA then?’
‘If I was a duck, I’d be proud of an arse like that,’ says Claire.
‘Gertcha,’ says Sammy and smacks her on the bum. He opens the door, waves the ten bob note at us and says, ‘Tara, girls.’
The door slams and Claire puts a Johnny Ray record on the Dansette, a nice slow song I haven’t heard before.
I say, ‘How come he’s got a car? I thought he was on the National Assistance.’
‘He had a good little tickle in the week.’
‘What sort?’
‘Him and a mate done a chemist up Willesden.’
‘I never knew Sammy went robbing.’
‘He does now.’
I hear the car splutter into life and move off. ‘I need to borrow some clothes,’ I say.
‘What for?’
‘I’m going out.’
‘Dave again?’
‘No, it’s a mate of his who’s …’
‘Don’t give me that malarky, Reen. I want to know what’s going on.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I know he’s rumbled you did Johnny.’
‘How …?’
‘It’s bleeding obvious, isn’t it? He snaps his fingers and you jump.
Twice in two days.’
I sit on the bed. I feel very tired. Claire sits down next to me and I tell her the score. When I’ve finished, she looks away as if she’s thinking.
Then she says, ‘You ain’t got no choice.’
‘Not much.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘I reckon.’
‘As long as that’s the end of it.’
‘I hope.’
The door opens and Claire’s mum looks in. Her face is swollen on one side and I can see she’s tried to hide a bruise with makeup.
