Tsar

by Ted Bell

  “Asia. Don’t talk. Just do what I say. The blouse first.”

  She looked at him, hands balled into fists, eyes ablaze.

  For a moment, he thought she might rush him, strike him, rake her fingernails across his cheek, pound his chest. But she didn’t. Rather, the anger fled, and she gave him a smile, skeptical, tolerant, languidly amused. She slowly lowered her head and began to unbutton the row of tiny pearl buttons down the front of her blouse. There were a lot of buttons, and Hawke saw that her slender fingers were trembling.

  “You are full of surprises, aren’t you, Mr. Hawke?” she said, fumbling with the buttons.

  “You have no idea.”

  “I was fairly certain you went the other way.”

  “You mean there’s another way?”

  She laughed, her eyes afire. She was beyond caring which way he went, she realized. Far beyond.

  Hawke, his own eyes never leaving her, went over to the stool. He picked it up and placed it beside the Balinese chaise. He sat on the edge of the stool and took a sip of the rum, feeling it burn down into his gut. She finished with the buttons and stood with her hands on her hips, the cotton blouse agape.

  “What are you waiting for?” he said. “Take it off, Asia.”

  She pulled the blouse off and dropped it to the floor, suddenly looking up at him with a glance akin to defiance but edging closer to something deeper in the heart. She was wearing no brassiere. Her breasts were full and alabaster pale against the mocha brown of her deeply tanned stomach, arms, and shoulders. The rosy nipples were hard, erect in the damp coolness of the room. Pointing at him.

  He looked at her for a long time, passion beating inside him like a second heart.

  “Now the skirt.”

  She lowered her head again, reaching behind her with both hands to unbutton the skirt. She let it fall to the floor, where it puddled around her feet. She stepped out of it and kicked it away with one foot.

  Her finely muscled legs were long and lean and brown. There was a thatch of curly gold between her smooth thighs.

  He tore his eyes from her body and said softly, “Look at me, Anastasia.”

  She complied, holding his steady gaze. Then she cupped her right hand beneath her left breast, holding it as if in offering, closing her eyes, caressing herself, running a finger over one protruding nipple, then pinching it, kneading it roughly between her thumb and forefinger.

  Her mouth was open now, but he could see her nostrils flare as she inhaled through her nose. Her left hand was drifting downward over her belly.

  “I want to…” she said in a small voice.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She reached between her legs. Two fingers disappeared into the already glistening flesh between her now parted brown thighs. Her head fell forward again, and she swayed slightly, a low moan escaping her lips. Hawke watched her, deeply moved by the very sight of her. Stirred, he felt himself growing harder and straining with the need for her but wanting to prolong the intensity of this moment, preserve desire, stay perched on the knife’s edge of it forever.

  A savage bolt of lightning struck in the banana grove, very close to the house. For an instant, the room filled with blinding white light. Even the crackling air around them smelled singed, burnt. Hawke felt a slight ache in his heart, caused, he thought, by the bolt. A deafening thunderclap came a second later. The wind had roared up to gale force, and with it came the rain at last, a drenching downpour, hard and slanting almost sideways. The louvered French doors were banging wildly on their hinges. Hawke reached out and stroked her cheek.

  “Stay there, please. Don’t move.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “I’ll close the doors.”

  He went around the room and locked the shutters one by one. On the west side, it was difficult to get them closed, the howling wind was now so strong. When it was done, he went back to her, standing close, crowding against her, his face smiling down at her.

  He crooked one finger beneath her chin, lifted it, and kissed her upturned lips, parting them with his tongue. She turned her face away, her breathing shallow and quick.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said. “Just as you are. Just at this very moment. Unforgettably beautiful.”

  “Alex.”

  She retreated a step and pulled the tortoise-shell comb from her hair. Tresses fell to her shoulders in a tangle of dark golden curls. She looked at him, seized the thin grey cotton of his shirt in one fist, and yanked it away from his chest, the old shirt ripping away easily, now discarded, and then her hands were at his belt buckle, not trembling now but furious, whipping the leather strap away and ripping his trousers open, pulling them down with her as she fell back against the chaise and sat there before him, looking up with wide eyes at the upright declaration of love or lust or whatever the hell he so obviously had in mind. It no longer mattered to either of them. They were simply locked together, trapped inside the same storm.

  She leaned forward and touched her lips to the tip of him, then took a deep breath and touched him lightly with her darting tongue, first tracing a small circle, then lapping at the length of him, licking him, no longer ladylike, just greedy and hungry and thirsty, her lips moving over the taut veins, marveling at the steely flesh so soft and yet so hard. She pushed her head forward, flattening her face against him, and felt his hands at the back of her head, his strong fingers entwining themselves in her hair, guiding her movements.

  “Asia,” he murmured, and she heard him from her submerged depths, heard, too, the raindrops beating hard against the roof and shutters as the storm finally broke wide open overhead, heard fierce winds screeching around the eaves, a tumult of thunder crashing somewhere above, not far above, and she lay back against the ruby silk cushions, hooked one long leg over the arm of the chaise, and waited for him.

  “You certainly could have fooled me, Mr. Hawke,” she said, laughing, catching her breath, and beckoning him toward her with a curling index finger.

  Skin on skin, he moved on her, his weight suddenly upon the length of her, a hardness probing first outside, rubbing against the drenched lips, then pushing deep inside her as she cried out and raised her hips, realigning them, and then he was within her, fully, searching for more and more of her, as if there were no limit to this seeking.

  A groan rumbled from the back of his throat, and then his hands were beneath her, clenched, gripping, cradling, willing her to come with him to the next level, too strong to wait, too gentle to force her, his mouth finding hers, crushing her lips, and then his head thrown back in abandonment and surprise as he felt her nearing and then reaching the moment, both of them crying out as the shutters at the foot of the bed were suddenly ripped open by the tearing wind, and the hard slanting rain came down upon them like a waterfall.

  “Oh, God, Alex.”

  He looked down at her lovely face, quizzically, and saw her smile, breathless and panting, and heard something resembling laughter bubbling up from inside her, as she shook her head from side to side, her face full of delight and wonder, blinking the streaming raindrops from her eyes.

  “We’re getting drenched, you know,” Hawke said, his face buried in her hair, his lips pressed against her ear.

  “Don’t worry, darling, this can’t last forever.”

  “It can’t?” Alex Hawke said, raising his head and smiling down at her, wanting her again already.

  22

  MIAMI

  Fast Eddie Falco, the septuagenarian security guy at Stoke’s condo, One Tequesta Point, jerked his head up like a startled chicken. He dropped a worn paperback book into his lap and stared at the vision before him. One of his residents, the human mountain known as Stokely Jones, had just emerged from the north elevator looking like a presenter on that MTV awards show.

  “Hiya, Stoke,” Eddie said, eyeballing his friend from head to toe and wolf-whistling through his remaining teeth.

  “Good evening, Edward,” Stoke said, pausing to toss his GTO keys into the air an
d catch them behind his back. “How good do I look? Tell the truth.”

  Stoke turned around to let Eddie get a good look at him. He was sporting a white satin dinner jacket over a black ruffled shirt with a sky-blue silk bow tie and matching cummerbund, patent leather shoes on his feet, size 14 EE.

  “How do you look?” Eddie said, rubbing his grizzled chin. “I’ll tell you how you look. You look like you’re going to a goddamn rap-star coronation or something. Who’s getting crowned tonight? Scruff Daddy? P. Diddly? One of those characters? Hell’s his name, Boob Job? That Poop Dog fella? Those guys change their names so often I don’t know how they ever get any damn mail.”

  Stoke laughed out loud. Poop Dog? Boob Job?

  Eddie went back to his book. He was sitting in his highly customized golf cart with a stone-cold stogie jammed between his teeth, reading one of his treasured paperback mystery novels. He was in his reserved parking place, which happened to be right next to where Stokely parked his metallic black-raspberry 1965 GTO convertible.

  Stokely’s GTO could, according to its owner, do the standing quarter-mile in less than eight seconds, NHRA certified. Eddie was mildly impressed. God knew the damn thing was loud enough to make a deaf man’s ears bleed. He braced himself, waiting for his pal Stoke to crank up the big mill any second now.

  Eddie much preferred his own vehicle, a vintage machine built in the early sixties by Harley-Davidson, back in the glory days when Harley had the wild-assed notion of building golf carts. Totally custom job, and Fast Eddie had poured his heart and soul into his baby, one of a kind, a classic. Only one Stoke had ever seen with an actual Rolls-Royce grille on the front. Sure, it was unusual transportation for security work but right at home among the high rollers on the little island of Brickell Key.

  “Poop Dog?” Stoke said again with a grin, headed for his car, twirling the keys around his finger. “Is that what you said? Poop Dog?”

  “Whatever,” Eddie said, not even looking up from his novel. “You know who I’m talkin’ about, I forget what the hell his name is.”

  “Snoop Dogg happens to be the cat’s name,” Stoke said, unlocking the driver’s-side door. “And no, it ain’t him.”

  “So, who’s getting crowned?”

  “Fancha. She’s the opening act at the opening night of a new joint over on the beach. Elmo’s.”

  “Club El Morocco. S’posed to be very upscale according to an article in the Herald this morning. Russian money, I hear. Hold on to your wallet.”

  Stoke climbed in behind the wheel. The big V8 roared to life as he turned the key and simultaneously hit the switch that lowered the ragtop.

  “What are you reading?” he asked Eddie over the low rumble of the 541-cubic-inch engine, leaning out his window. He liked to let his baby warm up for a minute or two, get her juices flowing.

  “What?” Eddie cried, cupping his hand behind his ear. The acoustics inside One Tequesta’s garage did wonders for a 600-horsepower engine.

  “What book are you reading?” Stoke shouted.

  “Bright Orange for the Shroud,” he said, holding it up.

  “Again? We already read that.”

  Stoke and Eddie were the founding members of a two-man book club, the John D. MacDonald Men’s Reading Society. They confined themselves to the twenty-one greatest works of literature ever written, namely the Travis McGee novels by the master himself. Sometime ago, they’d even driven the GTO up to Lauderdale on a kind of pilgrimage. They’d had lunch at Pier 66 and then visited the holy shrine, slip F-18 at Bahia Mar, home to McGee’s houseboat, the Busted Flush.

  Stoke backed out of his spot and stopped opposite Fast Eddie’s cart. “We read Bright Orange last week, Eddie. Remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m reading it again. I like it.”

  “I’m already halfway through Darker Than Amber,” Stoke said, putting the Hurst four-speed shifter into neutral and blipping the throttle, giving Eddie a blast of pure mechanical adrenaline. “You better catch up.”

  “Don’t you worry about me, pal,” Eddie said, face already buried back in the book with a babe in a black bikini on the cover. “I happen to be an Evelyn Wood graduate.”

  Stoke was about to pop the clutch and burn a little rubber when something occurred to him. He hit the brakes.

  “Hey, listen up a second, Eddie. I just thought of something. Serious.”

  Eddie put the book down and said, “Now what?”

  “Might want to keep your eyes open tonight. I got a bunch of weird hang-ups on my machine today. Heavy breather, thinks I’m a chick maybe, I dunno. I’m listed in the book as S. Jones.”

  “A stalker? Stalking you? Poor bastard.”

  “All I’m saying is, you see anybody doesn’t look right poking around tonight, don’t hesitate to call your PD buddy at Miami Dade, okay? Seriously. Anybody come asking for me, call my cell.”

  “Those Russians that blew up half of Coconut Grove the other night? Something to do with that, maybe, you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  Eddie knew Stoke’s company, Tactics, was involved in some very weird government stuff, he just didn’t know what or how weird.

  “I’ll hold down the fort. Don’t worry about me,” Eddie said, going back to his book as Stoke pulled out of the garage, “Give my regards to high society.”

  Stoke laughed and accelerated down the curving palm-lined drive. He’d head over to the Hibiscus Apartments on Clematis and pick up Sharkey. Then he and Luis would blast over the causeway to South Beach. Fancha had gotten him a reserved table right down front, but he was pretty sure there’d be a howling mob outside the velvet rope. After all, tonight, Elmo’s and his baby were the two hottest tickets in the hottest town in the hottest hemisphere on the planet.

  WALTZING INTO CLUB El Morocco, already fashionably shortened by the locals to “Elmo’s,” Stoke felt as if some time machine had whisked him back to Manhattan in the thirties. Everyone in South Beach seemed time-warped tonight. You had surfer dudes in top hats and tails and glam queens in old black-and-white-movie-star dresses; but it was the décor that knocked Stoke out. Descending the wide marble staircase with his pal Sharkey in tow, he half expected the smiling ghost of Clark Gable or Jimmy Cagney to pass them on their way up.

  Below them, the curving walls of the oval room were blue and white zebra-striped. There were life-size snow-white palm trees all around the room, the fringed white fronds moving idly in the air-conditioned breezes. At the far end of the main lounge, he could see the large bandstand. There were about fifteen cocktail tables around a blue-mirrored dance floor, dancers circulating in the semidarkness. From below came the smell of cigarettes and the sound of clinking glasses. Against the bar, a group of celebs was being photographed, flashes going off every other second.

  A fifteen-piece swing band, dressed in white tie and tails, was in full swing on the bandstand. There were blue and white zebra-striped banquettes around the room, already full of rich folks who’d come early or somehow gotten seated at the most expensive tables. One small round table remained, just below the bandstand, and it looked empty.

  “C’mon, Shark,” Stoke said. “Our table awaits.”

  They made their way downstairs and through the crowded room, Stoke running interference for the little Cuban guy.

  “Great table,” Sharkey said, pulling out his chair, looking around at the sparkling crowd, hands touching jeweled hands over white tables dotted here and there with famous faces. “Let’s order us a bottle of pink champagne, boss.”

  “Do it,” Stoke said. “Just get me a Diet Coke.”

  The waiter brought their drinks just as an announcer in a white-sequined tuxedo came out and introduced-ladies and gentlemen, one word was all it took to get the crowd’s attention-Fancha!

  The now empty stage went dark except for a single spot creating a white circle of wavering light floating across the sequined curtains. The piano tinkled a few notes, and a lovely disembodied voice floated out over the room. Everyb
ody seated under the drooping white palms suddenly went dead quiet.

  Fancha stepped through the curtain and into the light to a sudden burst of loud applause. Fancha, wearing a midnight-blue gown, sang “Maria Lisboa.” It was the slowest, saddest, most beautiful song Stoke had ever heard her sing, and when she was finished and stood quietly with her head bowed, letting the adulation wash over her, he got to his feet, putting his hands together for his woman, and he didn’t even see that everyone else was on his or her feet, too, applauding his baby in a standing O.

  A few minutes later, during a lull in the show, a waiter bent and whispered into Stoke’s ear, something about two gentlemen who wanted him to join their table for a cocktail.

  “What?” Stoke said, looking at the white card on the silver tray. It had a big black M on it. Somebody named Putov, an executive producer, it said.

  “Mr. Putov,” the waiter said, indicating the banquette with his eyes. “Miramar Pictures, Hollywood. You are Mr. Levy, no? Suncoast Artist Management?”

  “Is that who they said? Sheldon Levy?” Stoke smiled at Luis. His cover was holding.

  “Yes, sir, they said, ‘Please take this to Mr. Levy at the front table.’”

  Stoke looked across at the banquette, smiled at the two guys. “Ever heard of Miramar Pictures?” he asked Shark out of the corner of his mouth.

  Luis had some kind of weird Hollywood fixation, always reading movie magazines, Variety, and Billboard, left them lying around the office, drove Stoke crazy. Come in Stoke’s office, asking him if he knew how much Spider-Man 4 had grossed over the weekend, Stoke sitting there reading about his beloved Jets going into the tank halfway through the season, have to throw Shark’s skinny ass out of his office and close the door.

  Shark said, “You kidding me? Miramar? They’re huge, man. Ever hear of Julia Roberts? Ever hear of Angelina Jolie? Ever heard of Penelope Cruz? Salma Hayek? Halle-”

  “Yeah, yeah. Halle Berry I have heard of, believe me. What the hell these show-business types want with us?’