‘I won’t stand in your way, Mack. You have to follow the money, brother,’ Rink told him philosophically.
Not me, I thought. Job satisfaction meant a whole lot more to me than any amount of remuneration or leftover finger food I could eat. But I kept my opinion to myself. Velasquez also looked thoughtful, and he perhaps was thinking along similar lines as me, but then he placed both palms on his face and rubbed some life into his rubbery features. ‘Man, I’m bushed,’ he said. ‘Who knew standing still for five hours was such hard work?’
He had a point. I had aches in places I didn’t know I had places. Rink though appeared untroubled: but he had mastered the art of stillness both mentally and physically, which was why he was one of the best recon scouts I’d ever met, and I’d met hundreds. When he was in the zone, he could make a fence post appear hyperactive.
‘I have to have a quick debriefing with the security manager,’ McTeer announced. ‘See you guys downstairs in a few minutes?’
We began moving for the elevators while McTeer went in search of Jeeves the butler, Rink and Velasquez a couple of paces ahead of me. Being the thoughtful employer, Rink checked that Velasquez was OK.
‘I’m good, Rink. Ready for more action though. I think I’ve spent enough time answering phones, don’t you?’
‘As long as you are ready, brother.’
‘Ready for anything.’ He sneaked a look back to check McTeer didn’t overhear. ‘Just not something as mind numbingly boring as this BS again.’
‘I second the motion,’ I put in.
‘It’s not every job where we get to chew fat with probably the most famous couple in the world,’ Rink said. He meant the undisclosed rap artist and his singer/actress wife. The fact he hadn’t actually spoken to either didn’t matter; they’d shared the same oxygen for a few hours.
‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I once met and had my photo taken with Mickey and Minnie at Disney World.’
Rink laughed, and shook his head at me over his shoulder. He’d reached the elevator and hit the call button. I glanced along the short corridor. ‘Is there a toilet round here? I need to pay a visit before we get in a cab.’
‘I think the ones on this level are reserved for feted guests,’ Rink said.
‘Fuck ’em,’ I said wryly, as I recalled my dad’s wise words. ‘We all have to take a crap, Rink, and I want to check out the quality of the toilet paper. Perks of the job, right?’
Rink screwed his face. ‘Just make sure you remember to flush, brother.’
‘And don’t go signing your autograph on the stall,’ Velasquez added. He mimed dipping his finger and swiping it on an imaginary wall. Now I screwed my face.
‘Gross!’ Rink said, but he was grinning.
Boys will be boys, despite the fancy surroundings.
While they boarded the elevator, still trading toilet humour, I went off in search of the men’s room. Raised voices led me to it.
I paused outside the door. I knew it was the right washroom because of a fancy brass plaque depicting a gentleman in a top hat; there was an adjacent ladies’ room further along the corridor. So it surprised me when I identified both voices as emanating from within the men’s room. The loudest was male, the other higher-pitched, and definitely feminine, not to mention frightened. There was a sharp crack that the closed door barely dulled, and the woman yelped in pain.
What happens in Miami stays in Miami. The over-abused axiom didn’t hold much meaning if something could be stopped from happening.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside.
It was a decision a wise man might live to regret, but call me impulsive.
‘Is there a problem here, ma’am?’ I asked.
4
It was the type of washroom where a polite attendant would hand out damp towels and hand cream, maybe even a spritz of expensive cologne, in exchange for a generous tip, but now that most of the paying guests had retired to bed, so too had the attendant. There were individual stalls, a row of urinals and a bank of washbasins, all the golden fixtures and fittings glimmering under soft lighting. At the end nearest the door there were even plush leather loungers, and a docking/recharging post for laptops and tablets should there be any waiting time. In retrospect I’d wager that the ends of the toilet paper were individually folded into neat little triangles. It was as pretentious a shithouse as any I’d visited.
The man had a woman arched backwards over the washbasins. But as I announced my entrance he turned to face me, one hand flat against her chest as if she required protection from me. The woman’s eyes were tearful, and her left cheek blazed with the imprint of a palm, but otherwise she was incredibly beautiful. She was dark-haired, tall, buxom, and her legs were lengthened to almost impossible perfection by the addition of stiletto heels. Her gold dress shimmered as it hugged her curves in all the right places. I’d noticed her earlier, though she was seated at the far end of the rooftop lounge, and had also noted her fair-headed beau when he’d snapped at her to shut her mouth when he was speaking. Throughout the proceedings I’d noticed he’d remained largely neutral to those who’d attempted to engage him in drunken chatter, pulling off the mean and moody look so well McTeer should have employed him for the evening. Reclining on a chaise lounge, he hadn’t given much hint of his size but I could see now that he was a good four inches taller than me, athletic rather than muscular, and about ten years my junior. He wasn’t intimidated one iota by my appearance.
‘There is no problem here,’ he told me. His voice was accented, clipped. ‘Your services are not needed. You can leave.’
It was one thing being ignored by rich punks, quite another when they chose to talk down to me as if I was a dog.
‘I wasn’t speaking to you.’ Purposefully looking past him, I caught the woman’s tear-filled gaze. ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry but you’re in the wrong washroom. If you’d like I’ll escort you out of here to somewhere safe.’
The man gave her a shove, so that he could fully face me. ‘You are intruding in a private matter,’ he warned. ‘Leave now or you’ll be sorry.’
He’d pale eyes, almost yellow, but that could have been an effect of the mood-setting lights. Despite hair the colour of weak tea his skin was nearer white coffee, and it wasn’t a recent tan from being under the Floridian sun but genetics. His rangy build, his appearance, hinted at a mixture of Middle Eastern and Russian heritage, which fit his accent. If I had to punt my best guess I’d say he was originally from Georgia or Chechnya or another of the former Soviet states between the Black and Caspian Seas.
‘If I leave I will be sorry,’ I countered, and again searched the woman’s gaze, letting her know it was the last thing I’d do. I held out a hand for her. ‘Ma’am.’
She looked fearfully at the back of the guy’s head, then at me. She shook her head gently. ‘I’m… I’m fine. Really. You should leave like Mikhail said.’
‘Can’t do it,’ I said.
‘You can and will,’ Mikhail snapped and took an aggressive step towards me. My palm shot up flat between us, and he halted. His fists bunched at his sides.
‘Take it easy, buddy,’ I warned him. ‘You need to calm down.’
‘Where do you come off telling me what to do? You are a damn performing monkey in a suit, and a cheap one at that. Here’s what is going to happen. I tell you what to do, or I’ll have your damn job and your fucking balls.’
‘You’re welcome to the job,’ I replied, but left the rest unsaid.
‘Damn right I am. I could buy you, like that!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I could buy this fucking hotel. Do you think I’m a man to be told what to do?’
‘I think your ears are so full of your own pompous bullshit you wouldn’t listen anyway.’ I took a step deeper into the room. His fists tightened a few notches and I shook my head in disdain. ‘But you should. Go ahead, buy the hotel, but never… ever assume you can own anyone. Nobody is property you can do whatever you want to.’ I indicated the woman. ‘Nobody.’
&n
bsp; He thumbed back at her. ‘She’s mine, and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want to her. And no punk ass rent-a-thug is going to tell me different.’
This contract was important to Jim McTeer, and I’d promised to behave so I didn’t spoil the prospect of future work for him. I’d especially promised to keep my hands to myself but the guy was seriously testing my resolve. McTeer would be pissed off, but he’d also understand. If it were he in the washroom, McTeer wouldn’t walk away and allow the punk to continue beating the girl either. But I had a sense of what to expect if I put Mikhail on his arse. Squint-eye and his pals had taken their beating because they knew they’d been jerks; this arsehole would probably hit me with a lawsuit and a bill for his dental work that would ensure I’d be existing on minute noodles and refried beans for the foreseeable future.
I moved a pace to one side, so I didn’t present an immediate hostile threat. I again offered a hand to the woman. ‘Ma’am,’ I said softly, ‘you don’t have to put up with this.’
‘I… I can’t leave,’ she croaked.
‘You are not leaving, Trey,’ Mikhail emphasised, so it was clear who was the decision maker.
Trey – I took it that was the woman’s name and not a Russian swear word I was unfamiliar with – placed her manicured fingernails against the sore spot on her cheek. Her tongue played along her bottom lip. She was checking for injury, anticipating more to come. ‘Mikhail,’ she said reasonably, ‘this is not the time or place. We both should leave.’
‘You should listen to her,’ I added. ‘But you should leave separately.’
‘The only one leaving is the interfering asshole.’ As he made the declaration he sneered down at me. ‘You have three seconds, my friend. And I’m counting.’
I’d tried diplomacy.
It had failed miserably.
Now the inevitable was unavoidable, because I could tell he wasn’t even going to wait until three.
As he twitched, I hit him.
The best form of defence is offence. Never let it be said otherwise.
My uppercut caught him under the chin before he’d even loaded up his arm for a swing, and he sat down heavily on the floor. He was stunned but not out. When he glimpsed up at me I saw the yellow tinge to his eyes had been a trick of the light. They were blue, as cold as ice, but in direct contradiction they simultaneously radiated volcanic heat. This was a man unused to being struck, and he hated the sensation as much as he did me.
‘Stay down, pal,’ I warned him as I again extended a hand for Trey.
She didn’t immediately accept my offer of safety. She was as stunned by Mikhail’s downfall as he was, and probably as afraid as he was angered. She looked down at him, one hand now almost stuffed inside her mouth. She took a faltering step towards him, her heart and mind at war. But then she halted and a shudder went through her. When her gaze switched to mine her dark eyes were wide and begging the question of me: do you know what you’ve just done?
‘He asked for it,’ I told her. ‘If there’s one thing I despise it’s a bully. Now come on. He can’t hurt you any more. I won’t let him.’
Tentatively she edged around Mikhail. He made a half-hearted grab for her but she dodged out of his reach, and he transferred the hand to his mouth. He dabbed his lips with the back of his wrist. There was blood on it when he raised the hand to point at me. ‘You have made a big mistake, my friend.’
‘You’re the one on your arse with a sore jaw,’ I pointed out.
He shook his head, then slowly dribbled bloody saliva between his knees. ‘Your mistake was not finishing me. Believe me, I won’t make the same mistake.’
‘For any threat to work, your victim needs to be afraid it will come true. Stand up, I’ll knock you down again, and yeah, I just might have to finish you so we don’t have to keep going through the same old rigmarole. Believe me?’
He ignored me. He stared at Trey, who’d taken cover behind me but hadn’t yet fled the room. ‘You have made a big mistake too, Trey. You’ve been places, been party to conversations, and been trusted. Go with him, but your betrayal will not go unpunished.’
I placed a protective arm around her waist, could feel her shivering, and gently urged her towards the exit. But she was resistant and for a moment I thought she was going to rush back to her fallen beau and beg for forgiveness. But she was made of sterner stuff. Her shivering grew to a tremor, pent-up fear morphing into excitement at her imminent escape, or maybe into anger that she’d taken his shit for so long. ‘You son of a bitch!’ she snarled as she touched her fingers to her swollen cheek. ‘That’s the last time you will ever hurt me, Mikhail.’
He didn’t reply; he only sneered up at me as he dribbled more bloody spit on the tiles. When he knew he’d caught my attention, he showed me his bloody teeth. ‘Be seeing you again, champ.’
‘Remember what I warned you about threats?’ I asked. ‘Oh, that’s right. You don’t listen.’
I allowed him to mull over my parting shot in private, while I ushered Trey out of the washroom and towards the elevators.
5
‘I have to go back.’
Trey’s proclamation wasn’t exactly a surprise. Fearful of the future, many victims of abuse chose familiarity over the unknown. Women beaten mercilessly by their partners often made excuses for them, even believing that they themselves were somehow responsible for pushing their partners to such bad behaviour. Often they’d lie on the abuser’s behalf, resist help, and even defend their abuser when push came to shove. Some victims ended up dead at the hands of those they wouldn’t say a wrong word against. I had caught a glimpse of tougher mettle in Trey and hoped she wouldn’t cave in, but her words were hardly unexpected.
‘If you go back things will only get worse. Trust me. Besides, you don’t owe that punk a damn thing. Let him think about how much of an asshole he was to you while nursing his own sore mouth.’
‘He only slapped me.’ Her downcast expression betrayed the lameness of her words.
‘This time,’ I said, and gave her a forthright look, but she refused to meet it.
I hadn’t yet pressed the down button, only closed the elevator doors, giving her a few seconds’ breathing time to get a grip of herself before we reached the ground floor and had to mingle with other people. Trey leaned wearily against the rear wall, both arms folded behind her lower back. Her neatly styled hair had come away from its fixings and hung loose over her features. I couldn’t see her eyes, only her quivering bottom lip. She was the definition of forlorn.
‘You weren’t working tonight,’ I said.
She glimpsed up at me from under her sweeping bangs. ‘I was a guest.’
‘Yeah.’ Initially I’d made the assumption that she was one of the professional escorts hired to accompany the rich guests, but Mikhail’s assertion that she’d been places, been involved in conversations, and been trusted, had informed me otherwise. Her relationship with him had been lengthier than a few paid-for hours. I decided it best to keep quiet about presuming she was a hooker. It might not endear me to her, could even earn me a slapped face too. That she was his long-term partner also explained why she felt so bad about his comeuppance and wished to return to soothe his bruised ego.
‘Mikhail is your boyfriend, right?’ I went on.
‘More than that.’
‘Husband?’
She showed me a diamond-encrusted ring on her wedding finger, and she shuddered in regret. ‘This isn’t just for show.’
‘Then I can understand you feeling bad about walking out on him, especially with me, a stranger. But you need to give him some space, let him cool down and sober up before you speak to him again. If you go back now he’ll only take up where he left off, and this time he’s got something to be really angry about. Why did he slap you like that?’
She had the grace to look embarrassed as she tucked her locks behind one ear. ‘He didn’t take me into the men’s room so that we could talk while he was in the stall.’
‘Oh,’
I said. I’m broad-minded, but could still be embarrassed when missing the obvious.
Despite the flushed cheeks, Trey wasn’t really shy – she was angry. ‘I told him that we weren’t going to do it in any washroom and I didn’t care how fancy it was. He wasn’t happy, said the least I could do was get down on my knees for him.’
I cleared my throat.
She stared at me dead in the eye. ‘I’m no slut.’
‘I didn’t suggest you were.’
‘You intimated it. You weren’t working tonight, huh? I get what you meant now. What? You’re regretting stepping in between a man and his wife’s business?’
‘Not at all. It’s like I said, he doesn’t own you, wife or not. He had no right to hit you like that.’
‘You hit him. What makes you any different?’
‘He deserved a punch in the face, you didn’t.’
‘Wow,’ she said, and stared between the toes of her stilettos. ‘Don’t you think that’s all a matter of personal opinion? In his culture it’s a wife’s duty to see to her husband’s needs. Perhaps I did deserve a slap for my wilfulness in refusing him.’
‘No way. In some cultures men put the welfare of their goats before their wives or children. Doesn’t make it right, just because it’s the way it’s been done for generations. And if you want to argue cultural ways, then in mine I cherish women and children. I protect them.’
‘Oh yeah. Where are you from: freaking Utopia?’
‘I’m British.’
‘Yeah. I got that. Men don’t hit their wives in England?’
‘Some, but they don’t deserve to be called men in my opinion.’
‘Your opinion,’ she said, but this time smiled sadly. I was slow to catch on that she was teasing, or perhaps reminding herself that not all men were bullies.
‘I meant what I told Mikhail,’ she said, growing more serious. ‘That was the last time he’d ever hurt me. The last time I’d allow it at any rate. But you heard him, right? He said I’d be punished and Mikhail isn’t one for making idle threats.’
Marked for Death Page 3
