The Payback Assignment

by Camacho, Austin S.

  Steel fingers closed on her wrist and nine-millimeter death was suddenly staring her in the face. She caught her breath and froze. Her eyes crossed as the Browning Hi-power’s muzzle brushed her nose. There was a terrible moment of peak tension, then Morgan’s fingers relaxed on her arm and he lowered his automatic to the floor next to its shoulder holster.

  “Sorry,” Morgan said with an apologetic grin. “Trigger nerves.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re out,” Morgan said, standing and stretching as if the incident had never happened. “Are you about ready to get on the road? I think I got everything we need.”

  Felicity found his casual demeanor, after sticking a gun in her face, a little disconcerting. She backed away, trying to push her brain into the new conversation.

  “I appreciate the gesture, and this stuff is nice, but you don’t really think you can shop for me, do you?”

  “Why not?” Morgan answered, pulling dresser drawers open. “Look. Jeans, tee shirt, shoes, two purses, skirt, blouse, sunglasses, a bra and panties, plus what you’re wearing. Let’s see, comb, brush, toothbrushes and a suitcase. My clothes are in the closet.”

  “Wait a minute,” Felicity said. “A bra? You think you can look at me and...”

  “Thirty-seven C,” interrupted Morgan calmly. “Waist twenty-five. Hips thirty-eight. Ankles about seven. I never miss when it comes to judging distances. In any form.”

  He had stopped her. Felicity stood with her mouth partially open, unsure how she should react. Not only did he hit every measurement exactly, but she could not think of anything else she needed.

  -11-

  Marlene Seagrave sat in front of her vanity mirror, dressed only in a full-length slip, brushing her shoulder length blonde hair. She wasn’t pleased with what Anton had done with her hair this time, but that was only the leading edge of her unhappiness. Her image in the mirror was certainly not ugly, but it did not please her.

  They used to say she had soft brown eyes, like a fawn, but now narrow lines were growing under them. Just thirty-two years old, and she was already considering botox shots. And she had just found her first gray hair. Why that should move her close to tears, she did not really understand.

  Her arm movements became more and more forceful, although she knew no amount of brushing would make that gray hair go away. Besides, it was just one indicator of what was happening to her entire body. Six years ago she did calisthenics or aerobics almost every day, swam twice a week, and watched her diet very carefully. Then she married Adrian and all that changed. She went from starving model and Hollywood hopeful to society lady. Because of Adrian’s money she dined at the finest restaurants and drank the best liquor. Life was so much fun when it all began. She was the belle of the ball, and Cinderella never had it better. How she loved him then.

  Then?

  Now, the best clothes, the best hair stylists, manicurists and makeup could not make her the woman she was before. And with time, her view of the man she loved had only become clearer. Her luxurious apartment seemed cold to her now, as did their king size bed. For this Cinderella, happily ever after was the hard part.

  The bedroom door whooshed against the deep burgundy carpet as it opened. She turned, an automatic smile brightening her face.

  “Adrian. I didn’t know if I should expect you home tonight. That business meeting...”

  “Life isn’t all business, baby,” Seagrave said with a slight slur. He approached her wearing only a silk robe that was too long for his squat form. After six years of marriage, she could tell by his walk how many drinks he had gotten under his belt. Seeing him standing there at the edge of drunkenness, she could not help but compare him to her six-year-old mental picture of him. His complexion was rougher now and his brown hair thinner, but that was all superficial. More importantly, his eyes had grown harder. In them she could see that he looked at her less as a lover and more as a thing, a possession.

  Still, she stood as he reached out to put an arm around her. She wanted to give him the love he deserved. He was, after all, her husband.

  “Take a look at this, baby,” Seagrave said as he pulled a large velvet jewel box from his robe pocket. Her smile became more genuine as she accepted this unexpected gift.

  “Oh, Adrian, what is it? What’s this for? I mean, it’s not my birthday or anything.”

  “Open it,” he said, giving her a crooked smile. “You’ll know.”

  Her eyes widened to saucers as light glanced off her new prize. “It’s magnificent,” she breathed. Her heart pounded with a flush of renewed love. He was trying to make things better, and she would try too. She knew they could make it like it used to be.

  Her moment of euphoria passed a moment later as she recognized the brooch. That perfectly facetted diamond with its halo of matched pearls set in its marbled green base was unmistakable. It was the brooch she had casually targeted weeks ago at a party as part of an absurd negotiation. Her eyes dropped to meet his, showing only a hint of suspicion.

  “Honey, how did you ever get this? I can’t imagine any woman being willing to part with such a beautiful piece of jewelry once she had it. Besides, it must be worth a fortune.”

  “Don’t you worry about how I got it,” Seagrave said. “You just get ready to wear it to that party Saturday night. You’ve earned it. Or you will.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asked, not really wanting the answer.

  “I told you, baby.” There was an edge on his tenderness now. “Whatever you want, you get it. As long as I get what I want.” His stubby fingers slid up her thigh, around the curve of the hips she had begun to think of as too full. His breathing deepened as hers became shallower.

  “Oh, yes. We were talking about starting a family, weren’t we?” she said, backing away slightly. “I wasn’t sure you were serious, dear. Why don’t you get us a drink and we’ll talk about it now.”

  “Had a drink,” he muttered low in his throat. “In fact, had a few. And we already talked. We’re going to have a son. And we’re going to start on it right now.”

  His strength always surprised her. Gripping her upper arms he pulled her in to a hard, rough kiss. Before she could regain her balance he had spun her around and pushed her toward the king size bed that dominated the room.

  Marlene stumbled on the carpet. Her thighs smacked the edge of the mattress and she felt her nipples scrape across the chenille bedspread. Her fingers curled into the spread as she heard his knees thump to the floor behind her and felt her slip roughly pushed up around her waist. She was staring at their ornate walnut headboard and, above it, the cheap velvet painting of a matador she had always hated. She clamped her eyes shut, trying hard to call up a more romantic image and relax so it would not hurt so much when he entered her.

  -12-

  Morgan awoke at an elbow nudge from Felicity. He had warned her that he generally made it a habit to fall asleep whenever his attention was not needed for anything. He knew she’d wake him at the end of the flight. He leaned forward to look past her. The view out the window told him that their 747 had gone into its holding pattern over Los Angeles International Airport.

  At the airport in Merida, Morgan had been pleasantly surprised at the efficiency of the customs personnel. They were even fairly pleasant once he made it clear that he was more familiar with the applicable statutes than they were. No one at the airport questioned his international security officer credentials or his redundant multinational carry permits. Of course, he still had to endure an ungodly amount of hassle to get his working tools to travel with him. It was worth it, he supposed, for his machete and knives to be stored in the baggage compartment. Customs officials also forced him to pack his pistol in three separate cases, which naturally they provided, for a price. One case carried all his ammunition. Another contained the bolt from his pistol, while he packed the remaining harmless receiver and barrel in a third. All in all, he imagined it was less of a hassle than the hotel maid would go t
hrough when she found the bits of his disassembled submachine gun under his pillows.

  After landing, he walked ahead of Felicity through the buzzing beehive of LAX. He hoped he looked like any traveling businessman in his lightweight sky blue suit, white shirt and maroon tie. He still wore combat boots, but he had shined them to a high gloss. He brushed a determined red cap aside, taking their two suitcases and the three small gun cases by himself. Felicity followed, now dressed in the full tan skirt, plush brown blouse and rope sandals he picked up for her. Yes, they were a convincing tourist couple.

  The automatic doors opened before him, and he stepped out into air as hot and humid as the atmosphere he left behind in Mexico. Not the same though, because the air there carried a hint of sweetness from the foliage, whereas Los Angeles air, even this far outside the city, was thick with the petroleum and ash stench of smog. The heat seemed worse too, but only because he was wearing a tie now.

  Between jets taking off and automobile engines running he could barely hear his own thoughts. Felicity pointed to the long line of taxis waited at the curb, and he marched toward the lead cab. The taxi pulled forward to stop in front of them before they reached the street. They slid into the air-conditioned back seat and the slim black man up front jerked the car out into the dense traffic. Felicity leaned forward to give him an address in the Manhattan Beach area.

  For scenery, their trip rivaled the average hospital wall. The view was of one continuous freeway choked with cars, each mile looking suspiciously like the last. Morgan was oblivious to his surroundings, and figured Felicity would be too. After all, she had seen it all a million times before and, like his, her mind was surely occupied with other things.

  Morgan did not recover from his personal reverie until their cab stopped in front of a huge, contemporary structure that had been built as close to the coastline as such a building could stand without sliding into the ocean. Felicity thanked the driver when she paid him, and Morgan noticed that she was a generous tipper. Grabbing the small suitcase and one gun case before Morgan could, she led the way into the lush, luxurious building. The lobby was appointed in stainless steel with gold accents. A uniformed security guard sat behind a marble counter. While Felicity stopped to chat with the guard Morgan read the wall-mounted directory. Most of the building, he learned, was devoted to professional offices. The top three stories held apartments.

  The velvety decor mildly affected him, but other things impressed him much more. The building and its uniformed employees were quiet. A woman wearing a jumpsuit and apron was polishing a table at the side of the lobby, although the place already looked clean. A repairman stepped out of the elevator, maybe the reason Morgan saw no sign of maintenance needed anywhere. The place emanated efficiency.

  Morgan and Felicity stepped past the maintenance man just before the doors slid closed. Even the elevator moved silently. At the end of the rocket ride, the elevator whispered open at the top floor, the twentieth. Two apartment doors faced each other there, separated by a central tropical garden that was illuminated from a wide skylight above. He could not remember ever seeing the bird of paradise plants indoors before. Their blues and reds and yellows and oranges glowed as brightly as they ever did in their natural setting, their petals yawning like the birds’ beaks that gave them their names.

  Felicity strode to the door marked “number two” in fancy scrollwork. Next to the doorknob, an electronic cipher lock presented three rows of four numbers each. Felicity pushed eight buttons in a certain pattern, much like dialing a telephone number on a touchtone telephone. After the subtle click sounded, she turned the knob and opened the door.

  Morgan followed her into a cavernous space. Felicity touched a light switch revealing a huge, sparsely furnished, sunken living room. He judged the room to be twenty-one feet wide by twenty-eight feet deep. The marble tiled mezzanine under his feet continued around three sides of the room. He stepped down three steps into deep plush carpet that matched the walls. The color wasn’t really pink, but not quite red either. He thought he may have seen it on a paint pallet in a hardware store with a name like dusty rose or something of the sort. He couldn’t imagine anything more feminine. The furniture was plush, a velour texture that added to the feeling of softness the room exuded. Directly to his right stood a round oak table with three nicely padded chairs. In front of him, a hand rubbed oak cube filled in as a coffee table. Beyond it stood a very long and inviting sofa. Some searching of his memory produced a name for the color of the furniture. Mauve. Maybe. Ordinarily he would just call it tan, but in this case the specific shade seemed to matter. Behind the sofa, up on the mezzanine level, an array of stereo equipment looked out from behind glass doors. While he stood rooted, three steps past the door, Felicity crossed the room and stepped up to the bar beside the stereo cabinet. She reached into one of the upper cabinets, rattling glasses.

  The kitchen area was to the right of the sofa, and an overstuffed easy chair stood off to its left, almost in the corner. He continued to pan left to take in the wall on that side, and as he did his eyes widened in wonder. To his surprise, there was no wall to his left.

  On closer inspection, that wall was a series of glass panels, running from floor to ceiling, each three feet wide. Sheer curtains hung at each end. Morgan was staring out at a twenty-one foot vista of the Pacific Ocean. Rarely nonplused, Morgan had to admit that the view totally overawed him. For the first time in years, he was reminded of just what money can buy.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Felicity asked. “I get all the light. And I practically own the sunset.” Felicity’s voice had taken on a slightly Californian, almost valley girl accent that mixed oddly with the Irish tones he had detected before. She was pouring something over ice while he continued his turn around the room. Landscapes and still life paintings in a variety of sizes hung on the wall behind him in a random pattern. The huge centerpiece, an oil painting of windmills, unexpectedly changed to a field of pansies. On closer inspection, what looked at first like a huge painting was in fact a forty-two inch plasma television screen. Someone had programmed it to display a rotating collection of art, probably from a disc in the DVD player below it.

  “By the way, Morgan, do we have a business deal?” Felicity asked, bouncing down the steps back into the living room. She extended her hand, with a drink for him.

  “I’m still deciding.”

  “Oh come on,” Felicity prompted, seizing a cellular telephone lying on the floor of the deck behind the couch. She walked around in front of the glass wall, sipping slowly. Watching her there, dwarfed before the Goliath moving mural, he thought this woman must be in love with the sunset.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Red,” he said, sipping from his own glass, and reacting to the sweetness of its contents. Bailey’s Irish Crème over ice was not one of his regular choices. “Maybe I can help you recover your fee if it requires any rough stuff. How about fifteen percent of what we collect, plus my expenses?”

  “Fine,” Felicity replied, “but don’t call me Red.” While she dialed the telephone, he dropped the suitcases and bounded easily up to the marble level behind her to stare out at the boundless view. He felt as if he had landed on top of some private mountain. The sky was infinite in all directions, with only one small bank of cotton ball clouds over on the left. There was no hint of the city behind them. In the distance a gull slid across the wind lazily, banking and playing the currents like a seasoned hang glider. Below, foam swirled around a body surfer as he was caught in what looked like a giant washing machine.

  In the background, he could hear the beginnings of Felicity’s conversation. Her voice was rising and falling as rhythmically as the hypnotic ocean swell before him. It became white noise, as if he could hear the waves below. None of her words caught his attention until a demand broke through.

  “If I don’t have the cash within seventy-two hours I’ll come and get it. And don’t be thinking I won’t.”

  Morgan spun and leaped to her side in one long bound
.

  “Red! What are you doing?”

  “I have friends, you know,” Felicity snapped into the telephone, ignoring Morgan. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Don’t tell them we’re coming,” Morgan said in a harsh whisper. “You’re throwing away the advantage of surprise, you idiot.”

  “I won’t take it, Stone,” Felicity shouted, waving him to be quiet. “It’s my money or it’s your arse.”

  When she slammed the telephone down, Felicity looked up as if she was expecting an argument, but Morgan reacted with neither rage nor resignation. His initial response to her conversation was a dumbfounded silence. Slowly he moved to sit on the edge of her plush sofa, which turned out to be real velvet, not just velour as he had assumed.

  “Did you just say Stone?” he asked after a moment. Felicity nodded her head.