Two to Tango (Nick Madrid)

by Peter Guttridge

  I've got to confess I didn't take to the manager. Cockney slick, with that hard talking wise-ass style of delivery patented by the yob intellectuals who had taken overTV in recent years.

  He wanted desperately to be hip but he just hadn't got it. He wore a sharp black suit that looked like he'd been poured into it and forgotten to say when. I also saw to my horror that he wore socks with cartoon characters on them. I was shocked to think people still did that.

  It's long been my contention that there should be separate parts of restaurants for any of the following: cartoon socks, women wearing long chiffon scarves or patterned tights or white boots or court shoes with either jeans or cords; men wearing their weekday striped shirts open-necked at the weekend with jeans and polished black shoes. In addition, people with loud shirts would be forced to sit and let their clothes shout at each other.

  Don't even get me started on leather trousers.

  Worse than the cartoon socks was the fact that Otis's manager had a laugh that screamed nutter. It was low but it went on for too long and it erupted in the wrong places. He clearly had no sense of humor. He was like an alien. To blend in he knew he should be laughing, that laughing was good but he laughed in the wrong places because he didn't know what was funny.

  My impression of him must have shown on my face. When I looked Otis was giving me a sardonic look. I didn't know where else to look, actually, because I was trying not to look at Conchita. She was packed into a low cut very short dress and every time she moved I broke into a sweat.

  And I couldn't help noticing that the jeep with the other guards bringing up the rear was about an inch from our rear bumper. Given we were going at about fifty miles an hour on a crowded road, this gave me pause for thought. Otis seemed to read my mind.

  "I love the fucking driving in this city-oh man," he said shaking his head. I frowned. "We've gone through three red lights in a row"

  "That's the way it works here," Horace said, without looking up from the sheaf of papers he was examining. I shuffled the papers I had in a folder on my lap in what I hoped was an important way.

  "You're a potential target-as a hostage or worse-so the drivers don't stop at red lights, don't stop at road junctions since that's where terrorists mostly strike. See the motorcyclist up ahead?"

  I craned in my seat and beyond the advance car, packed with guys with guns, could see a motorcyclist weaving through traffic. I nodded.

  "He's our point guy-he goes ahead stops other traffic."

  "How?" I said.

  "Rides out in front of it, blows his whistle, and sticks up his hand."

  "And does that work?" I asked, as we all heard the screech of tires, blare of horns, and the terrible sound of metal crunching into metal. Our car broke abruptly and he and I were pressed back into our seats. I saw the jeep behind us loons even closer in the back window, felt the jolt, and heard more metal grind as the jeep went into our rear.

  "Most of the time," I heard Ralph growl from his seat in the front.

  None of us was hurt much, though my eye watered for the next half hour or so.When the car braked Otis and Conchita had been thrown forward against their seat belts. For Conchita this meant putting even more strain on a dress that was clearly unequal to the task of constraining her large breasts. The manager and I were pressed deep into our seats.

  When the jeep then jolted our car forward it jolted Otis and Conchita, too. Conchita's back was arched and the jolt made it seem as if she were playing some game where you had to toss your breasts without using your hands. Her breasts bounced-the left one right out of the dress.

  I just had time to marvel at her engorged nipple when the reverse force took effect on my body. I wasn't wearing a seat belt. My papers shot off my lap onto the floor-I was aware of the manager's doing the same-and I toppled forward as Conchita hung suspended between coming forward and falling back.

  Her nipple caught me right in the eye. Better than a poke with a sharp stick you might think and that was my first thought, but then I came into contact with the beautiful breast behind the nipple. Bad enough that her nipple had almost taken my eye out but the surgically enhanced breast was unyielding in the extreme.

  I scrabbled away from her as rapidly as I could, uncomfortably aware that as I sprawled across her, her skirt had ridden right up around her hips and I was virtually mounting her.

  Otis pushed me back into my seat.

  "Got an eyeful did you?" he said, with an expression on his face that I wasn't sure meant he was joking.

  "Sorry," I mumbled as the manager came back out of his seat again, scrabbling for his papers. I felt I had to do the same, if only so he wouldn't see mine was some poetry I'd been fiddling with.

  There I've said it. I write poetry. Oh I may not be a sensitive police commander knocking off the odd melancholy sonnet in between solving crimes but I've had my moments. Well, moment.

  When I was a student, a poem of mine about King Arthur and Guinevere-I know, I know, I'm blushing more than you're cringing, believe me-was published in the university literary magazine.

  That wasn't the thrill. I've always had a pretty utilitarian view of writing.The thrill was the fact that the poem's publication led to my seduction by a young pre-Raphaelite type who was quite taken by my sensitivity.

  It ended in tears-when haven't my affairs?-but then she did identify rather strongly in the Arthurian story cycle with Eleanor, a.k.a. the droopy woman who killed herself for love of Lancelot.

  I was no Lancelot-no corny jokes about Lance alittle here, thank you-and she was certainly no droopy woman. I bought her a dress-Laura Ashley, natch-and she tore it in half with her teeth because she didn't like the pattern. Intense? I should say so.

  I swept my papers up and stuffed them into my red file. The manager tidied the rest and bunged them in his briefcase before shooting out of the car door.

  I thought he was going to see how the motorcyclist was, and indeed he did go over to him. The boot had sprung open and whilst the bodyguards from the jeep stood round the car in loose formation, guns trained outwards, the motorcyclist could have been bribed or threatened to fall there to prepare us for an ambush, the driver tried to close the lid.

  It kept springing up again.The manager came back over with the very hound-dog looking motorcyclist, who was limping and had blood on him, though from where I wasn't sure. A rapid conversation in Spanish ensued, then the motorcyclist, looking even more hound-dog, climbed into the boot. The driver shut the boot on him.

  "You've put him in the boot?" I said when Horace returned.

  "He was shaky, he needed to lie down so I thought he could do it there and hold the lid closed at the same time"

  And that's what he did. For the rest of the journey through Bogota's pot-holed streets, I was conscious of these fingers curled round the lip of the boot door holding it down.

  The national stadium was in a busy part of town. The fleet of cars was given immediate access. We swept in and parked round the back of the stadium. The guards-we had about a dozen with us and a further couple of dozen dotted round the stadium-were on full alert. They still weren't certain if the motorcyclist's accident had been a set-up.

  The stage had been set up at one end of the immense stadium; it had seating for a couple of hundred thousand easily. Banks of speakers twenty feet high towered over the stage at either end. There was an inflatable bouncy castle round the back-it's the kind of thing rock musicians, all children at heart, like to play on, for a few moments at least. Otis went on stage and hugged the two or three people who were up there.

  The tour had brought its own crew, partly for security reasons and partly because they had with them the best in the business. These were the guys that could work forty-eight hours without a break, wire up an entire city, and still find time to score a woman in the intervals.

  So people said. I must say, these guys didn't look too prepossessing. The usual overweight guys with grey pigtails, builders' cleavages on full display.They had that cliquis
h distance of people who feel not only are they hip, they are also part of an elite.

  In short, they ignored me. I didn't mind. I got myself a seat in the bleachers on the side of the stage and watched what was going on. The paranoid part of me was on the lookout for Porras and his guerrillas but the rational part of me said that was nonsense.

  Sometimes of course being paranoid is the only rational way to be. Way down at the end of the field I saw a jeep turn in and start slowly towards the stage some 500 yards away. As it picked up speed with a throaty roar of its engine one or two other people glanced over at it.

  There was no way to be certain there was anything peculiar about this jeep. Until, that is, the driver leapt out when it was a hundred yards away, did a roll away from the car, and started running back the way he had come, towards a black speck that quickly became a scooter. It reached the running man and he got on the pillion. A getaway on a scooter? The Italian Job come back, all is forgiven.

  The jeep was heading straight for the stage. A couple of security guards drew their weapons and moved towards it. Otis suddenly appeared at the back of the stage, walking slowly upstage, big headphones on, focused on tuning his guitar. The guards hadn't seen him. As far as they knew he was backstage.

  A couple of guards took potshots at the jeep but another shouted for them to desist, presumably because they didn't want any explosives on board to be detonated. He spoke rapidly into his radio mike.

  When the jeep was within fifty yards of the stage the paralysis of the guards suddenly broke. They started to hustle everyone out of the way. At this point Otis's limo came round the side of the stage and set out to head off the jeep.

  The jeep was going at about twenty mph, the speeding limo about fifty. The driver approached at an angle, slowed his speed to about twenty-five mph then rammed the front left side of the jeep. The limo's boot popped open.

  The height was wrong.Thejeep tilted but kept going straight as an arrow. People scattered. I was about to do the same when I saw a figure emerge from inside the boot and look around in total bewilderment. The motorcyclist.

  Oops. He saw the jeep and, all credit to the man, grasped the situation quickly. The limo was riding alongside the jeep, trying to nudge it off to the side. The jeep didn't want to be nudged.

  I had to look away when the motorcyclist reached across and grabbed the jeep door on the passenger side. His problem was the limo driver didn't know he was there so when he suddenly accelerated the motorcyclist had two options-he could stay with the jeep or with the limo.

  There was a third option-he could have his arms wrenched from his sockets. Brave, foolhardy, or just plain stupid, he opted to go with the jeep, the velocity pulling him out of the boot and leaving him hanging, knees crouched to his chest off the door of the jeep.

  I didn't see what happened next because when I looked away I spotted Otis, still twiddling with his guitar strings quite oblivious to what was going on around him, shielded from public view by the towering speakers.

  I waved my arms at him but he didn't see me. I looked back at the jeep. The motorcyclist was grappling with the door. The limo meanwhile was doing a big loop to pull across in front of it. It was about twenty yards from the stage.

  Saying a quick prayer to the God of idiots I ran across the stage and hurled myself at Otis.

  I was never a rugby player at school, hated all that macho stuff. If I'd thought about how to take him down I probably wouldn't have done it. If he'd been wearing the guitar strapped to his body I definitely wouldn't have done it.

  But he had laid the guitar down to tune it, using one of those computerized gizmos. I hit him around the waist from the side. He'd half seen me and had started to pull off the headphones before I hit him. We both went off the back of the stage.

  The drop was vertiginous but coming almost immediately back up was dizzying. We'd landed on the bouncy castle.

  On the second bounce I let go of him so he could bounce to his own rhythm whilst I tensed for the explosion on-stage.

  It came in my head instead. Otis bounced towards me and took a lazy swing at my head with a balled fist. I moved my head but the bounce was against me and he caught me on the jaw. I went down-and presumably back up again though I had no way of knowing since he'd knocked me out.

  I don't react well to violence. I certainly don't react to somebody punching me in the face. Maybe I've got an especially sensitive brain but having it bang around inside my skull with the impact of a blow does me no good at all.

  I woke up, looked up, threw up.

  Not because Otis was looming over meI was getting used to that but because that's the kind of guy I am.To give him his due he didn't act all disgusted as my projectile vomit went all over his feet. Didn't even look down.That's what I call a man. Or a drunk.

  For I couldn't help noticing as he leaned towards me that he gave off an overpowering smell of booze. His eyes were watery and unfocused again.

  "Sorry pal, thought you were being a dickhead," he said. "But it looks like you were trying to protect me, which is more than all these other tossers were doing."

  I sat up slowly. My head was thudding and there was a sudden shooting pain in my eyes. For a moment I was reminded of sex-but I've been told before I do it wrong.

  "Did the bomb go ofI?" I mumbled.

  Ralph the security guy's head came into view.

  "Nothing on board. Just a hoax. Or a warning"

  "D'you get the guys?"

  "Perps walked," Ralph said.

  "Don't you love that?" Otis said, grinning madly. "I love that fucking laconic way of talking."

  He lowered his voice and pushed his chin into his neck. "Perps walked. The fucking concision of it. That's why I'm an honorary-"

  "Honorary what?" Ralph said sharply, clearly suspecting some racist remark was in the offing.

  "Yank. I just love that bare bones language. Don't always understand it but I love it."

  "It's certainly terse," I said.

  "Terse, good word," Otis agreed. "Laconic now, there's an odd word-sounds like somebody is really relaxed, affable, chattydoesn't mean any of that, of course, means the same as terse."

  Fine time to have a discussion about the meaning of words. Ralph was still deciding whether to be hostile or not. I could see his point.

  I touched my jaw, flexed it gingerly. Nothing seemed to be damaged.

  "Who were those guys?" Otis said, helping me to my feet.

  "Couple of sicano," Ralph said. Otis raised an eyebrow.

  "Punks, hired assassins. Usually does it from a scooter. It's the kind of teenage hoodlum the drug barons hire. These are kids with death in their eyes. Don't expect to live long. All they care about is dressing well and driving a good scooter. They're hired to hater un trabajo-to do a job, a kill."

  I nodded. Ralph raised himself to his impressively full height.

  "What you've got to recognize is that the drug trade fills a vacuum in Colombia. For centuries about thirty families have owned pretty much all of Colombia. Carved it up between them a couple of hundred years ago. Over the centuries they've just used it as a resource, exploiting the country and the people, banking the profits.

  "So for a long time most people have been little more than slaves, scraping a living. The real economy is in terrible shape.Then the drugs come along and suddenly there's another economy, another way to make money.

  "The towns and cities are still filled with no-hopers but at least if they go to work for the drug barons they can earn some money. But only for a while, because the work they do isn't conducive to a long life. These guys are suicide killers, human bombs. All they care about are designer clothes, a scooter, and guns. They want to look good to their friends, in the same line of business, and they're full of such macho bullshit that the only way they know to impress is to be foolhardy.

  "So yeah they die young. Usually around fifteen when they get hired, sixteen or seventeen when they die. One of them comes for you you'd best hide because he don't
give a shit."

  "So what was this-a warning from the drug barons?"

  "A warning sure enough to show what could have happened if they'd wanted to. But as for who they is-could be the barons, could be the right wing death squads-they're pretty pissed at us coming down here poking our noses in their affairs"

  "What about guerrillas?"

  "Doesn't look like guerrilla stuff-there's no percentage in this for them."

  "I was kidnapped by a guerrilla leader called Ferdinand Porras. He has a possible motive."

  "Porras is a big fish but I don't know why he would be interested," Ralph said.

  "He has a grudge against Otis."

  Otis looked surprised. Befuddled actually.

  "Ferdinand Porras? Don't know the guy."

  "Not back in London?"

  Otis scratched his head.

  "Knew a Freddy Porras once, a sax player. Ben Webster going on David Sanborn. Last time I saw him was in a squat in Ladbroke Grove. A lifetime ago."

  "That's the one," I said. "Small matter of stealing his wife."

  "Freddy Porras? Freddy Porras is a guerrilla leader? You're shitting me! I mean he played killer saxophone but that's still quite a career leap."

  "Trust me, it's him," I said, describing the man I'd seen in the Amazon. Otis believed me-first person ever.

  "Always wondered what happened to hint-he just dropped out of sight. Guess you can never tell which way a jazzer is going to leap"

  "Did you steal his wife?"

  "What the hell was her name now? Lindy? Lindsay? Hell no. I maybe borrowed her for a little, just like everybody else did. She wasn't exactly discriminating"

  Otis looked at me a little blearily.

  "Freddy told you that?" I nodded. "Don't suppose he told you he wasn't exactly a saint himself. Fucked anything with a heartbeat. Good-looking guy-chicks came on to him all the time. But see, your typical Latino, it's okay for him to do that but not for his wife to fool around."