by John Booth
“But I haven’t paid the bill.” This was a stupid thing to say as I didn’t have any money on me, anyway. Apart from a couple of hotel tissues, the pockets of my clothes were empty; and if my former self possessed a purse or handbag, she’d dumped it somewhere before her memories faded.
“The room’s been paid in advance. I checked with the concierge before I came up.”
Hey, maybe this guy really was a detective. All I can say in my defense was he’d certainly fooled me up to that point. I was surprised he knew the word concierge and that a dump like this had one.
I climbed out of the window onto a rickety iron fire-escape. I suspected only the coatings of rust held it together. The building overlooked a warehouse and the fire-escape led down to a dark, uninviting alley. I felt exhilarated being up so high. The carbon monoxide and humid lifeless air probably helped, but I felt a tingle of excitement run through me and settle in my tummy. (I’m using tummy as a euphemism.)
When King clambered out, the fire escape swayed ominously. I could see the bolts in the wall pull out an inch or so. It should have frightened me. I put my arms around King in a bear hug. It wasn’t for protection. I just wanted to hold him and maybe take a deep breathe of his scent. He smelled good.
“Get off me, you won’t fall.”
Killjoy.
We made our way down the steps. I wanted to swing out into space holding onto the railing, but I suspected Mr Killjoy would object. It wouldn’t have been any fun by the time we got down to the second floor. It needed to be high.
King swung the ladder down to the ground and went ahead of me. I pressed my feet against the outside of the ladder and slid gracefully to the ground, bouncing lightly on my toes as I landed.
“Are you some kind of circus performer?”
I shrugged again; I also grinned because it was a nice idea.
King’s car was probably older than the fire escape. The cassette started when he turned the ignition and nineteen-fifties big-band music blared out from tiny tinny speakers. I should have known.
“Where are we going?” I asked as he pulled the vehicle out of the alley onto a busy street. He’d wound down his window and I opened mine. The nearest thing to air-con we were going to get. Traffic noise made it difficult to hear his reply.
“I told you, to see The Don.”
“And is he at some sleazy nightclub, with his big breasted molls serving him hard liquor while whores dance naked, sliding their oiled bodies against poles?” Okay, I may have said that a trifle sarcastically.
“It could be you oiled up and using your mouth to earn him a living, if that’s what he wants from you,” King said seriously, if a little breathlessly, because he had to shout over the noise to be heard. “Prostitution, gambling and drugs are his business.”
I must be some kind of tart because that didn’t frighten me in the slightest. I was beginning to wonder if anything did.
“We’re going to his casino complex and that’s all above-board since they legalized gambling. He wouldn’t want to give the city commissioners any excuse to revoke his license now that anyone can set up in competition.”
It seemed his casino was in a more upmarket part of town than we had been in because the streets became wider and classier as Rex drove. Restaurants replaced stripper bars and theatre fronts stood out across the paving, their awnings festooned with the names of famous actors. The people walking the streets looked wealthier too, women in expensive clothing rather than sour faced hookers on the arms of their pimps.
“Look…” King said and then lapsed into silence. I let it ride. The sights of the city were enough to keep me amused. We were in club-land now, sophisticated places offering entertainment and foreign cuisine that wasn’t limited to a kebab or a Chinese takeaway. We passed hotels with men waiting outside their entrances in fancy uniforms, ready to open any car door that pulled up. I discovered I love that sort of thing. I wanted to stop the car and flirt with a doorman.
“About my name….”
“Yes?” That was too good a story to ignore if he was willing to spill.
“I started the business when I was 21. Nobody wants to hire a PI who looks eighteen and has the name Jimmy Muldoon. I figured that a costume and the name Rex King would get me business.”
I couldn’t resist asking. “How’s that working out for you, kid?”
Rex hunched forward in his seat, almost hugging the steering wheel. “I get by.”
“Sorry.” I patted him on the back encouragingly. He’d been honest with me and I’d put him down. It didn’t seem sporting.
It looked as though we had left town for some kind of business area. Skyscrapers were lit up like Christmas trees. In the distance was a huge monstrosity of a building with the name ‘Lucky’s Casino and Hotel’ lit up on a sign so large it was almost a building in its own right.
“Let me guess,” I said nonchalantly. “That has to be The Don’s place. Only a criminal mind could be so tasteless.”
King pulled over, resulting in the man in the car behind blaring his horn apoplectically. He turned to look at me.
“I don’t know what you’ve got yourself into, kid. That letter said I wasn’t to tell you, but…”
I put a finger over his lips. “Then don’t. I must have had a reason to go to all this trouble and don’t you go spoiling it.”
I kept my finger over his lips until he nodded. When I let go he sighed.
“The Don said I should drop you at his private entrance at the rear of the hotel. Someone will be waiting for you there and he said you should follow him. That wax seal, the people who use it are very dangerous, more dangerous than The Don. They saved my life a couple of years ago, so I owe them. I don’t know what their hold is on you, but you take good care of yourself and if you ever need my help...”
I smiled and he smiled back. I was right; he was cute when he smiled.
“Thank you, Rex King,” I said very formally. “If I ever need your help I shall be sure to call, but you should be wary of the things you ask for. They might come true.”
He kissed me on the forehead and I fought a deep desire to rip the clothes off him and give him a present for being so nice. The fact that I was expected by The Don stopped me.
“We’d better go before The Don gets worried,” I said lightly and Rex started the engine.
3. The Don
Rex pulled his car into a drop-off point at the rear of the hotel. The front of the place was glamour and glitz, but the back was a concrete canyon littered with green dumpsters overloaded with trash. I got out to the smell of fries and burgers, the vents from the kitchen wafted warm air into my face. The Don was sure a class act.
Rex touched the brim of his hat in a casual salute.
“Here’s lookin’ at you, babe.” Tires screamed as he spun the wheels of his car and shot away leaving me coughing in a fog of burnt rubber. He was right to leave at speed, a comment like that was asking for it and I was just the girl to give it to him.
“You’se Carlotta?”
I turned to face a gorilla in a badly fitting suit who, it appeared, had learned his first words of English sometime earlier that day. Actually, I’m being unfair to gorillas; they’re beautiful in their own way, whereas this guy was every bit as ugly as he was brutish. A sense of unreality hung over me. I was in a bad film noir. It was difficult to take any of it seriously. However, the bulge where this guy’s badly concealed shoulder holster pressed against his undersize jacket was real enough.
I nodded. Big and ugly indicated I should follow him with a shrug and set off into the building without looking back. As I followed him down the elegantly finished corridor, knee deep in expensive red carpet, I wondered what I was doing here. Why had I sent myself to see The Don like this rather than calling him on the phone? Why was my memory missing and who were the people using the bird symbol? Was I one of them?
The gorilla knocked at a door, opened it and gestured for me to go ahead of him. Maybe he’d only mastered the t
wo words he’d used earlier and operated mainly by sign language? It wouldn’t surprise me; his mouth didn’t seem to be shaped for speech.
The room didn’t surprise me either. Nominally a rectangular library, leather bound books filled the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering three walls of the room. I wondered if the books were real or glued in fakes for show. The air was thick with cigar smoke. Expensive Havana cigar smoke if my nose didn’t deceive me.
Five men sat around a large, greenish-beige-covered card-table. A spotlight on the ceiling lit it, the only significant light in the room. To one side of the men, a pool table waited for players, the balls cued in position. Two tired looking girls in leotards leaned against the bookshelves, holding trays with drinks on them. I turned to see a small bar on the side I’d entered. No one was manning it.
The two girls stared at me belligerently. They looked like rabbits caught in headlights, nearly mindless creatures with pupils little more than pinpricks despite the gloom. But I was a female on their turf and their anger and anxiety showed. As far as I was concerned they could have it. They had nothing to fear from me.
The men ignored me, which gave me time to size them up. On the far side of the table was a man who only needed the word ‘Capo’ in neon over his head to complete the stereotype. The men wore expensive suits, but he was the only one with a waistcoat and massive rings adorning his oversized fingers. His thinning hair was slicked back with enough oil to fill a swimming pool. He was a heavyweight man and his jowls had jowls.
I wondered if there was an Italian tailor’s shop somewhere in this town called ‘Hood’s ’R Us’. If there wasn’t, someone was missing a perfect marketing opportunity to this lot.
Sitting at the right side of The Don was a young man, maybe as much as twenty years old, though I doubted it. Thin and nervous, I had him pegged as The Don’s son, not that there was much of a family resemblance. He looked out of place, if only because of his age and the sour, twisted look on his face. The rest of the men had stacks of plastic counters in front of them. His pile was pretty much depleted. He was a loser among losers.
Five card stud was my instant assessment. The level of concentration shown by the players indicated the stakes were high. Judging by the piles in front of them the guy with his back to me was winning, but apart from the kid there wasn’t much in it.
“Boss…”
Hey, the gorilla knew a third word. If he used two more I’d have to revise my assessment of him upwards.
The man I’d assumed was The Don looked up and scowled.
“Bring her here… into the light.”
A firm push in the back propelled me towards the table and almost into the guy with his back to me. He turned in his chair to stare at me.
“Carlo DiMaggio, I presume?” I said with as much dignity as I could manage.
“You don’t talk unless I ask somthin’, girly. You understand?”
I responded with a single finger raised in a clenched fist. He was testing me and I knew how to react to that. Chairs pushed away from the table, but The Don laughed and the men settled back down.
“Feisty, I like that.”
“I could take her away and teach her some manners?” This came from the kid. He looked eager. I took it for another test.
“I doubt you could get it up, but if you did I’d bite it clean off.”
The kid flushed and began to get to his feet. The Don pushed him back into his chair with ease. What I’d assumed was fat were muscles. I factored the information into my fight plan.
“Easy, Vinnie. She’s too valuable to damage … yet. You’ll get your turn later.”
I laughed with open derision and The Don frowned.
“Know your place, girly. You were sent in trade for the boy. But the way I see it, I’ve got two of you now. The deal’s off and you’re mine. Take her up to the Penthouse, Lou.”
It was a dismissal. He turned back to the game and the gorilla put one of his paws on my shoulder.
From the moment I entered the room I’d been making assessments to take out the opposition, a choreographed fight plan involving some spectacular moves on my part. Something told me I could do those things, though one or two of them seemed extremely unlikely. The gorilla’s hand on my shoulder proved to be my trigger.
I spun in the direction he was pulling me, lowering my centre of gravity as I turned and bringing my knee up into his groin. He grunted and grimaced in pain, but he didn’t fly into the air the way my battle-plan said he should. Instead he grabbed for my throat.
Recalculating, I stabbed at his eyes with open fingers. He fell back and let go before they arrived. Another miscalculation, I shouldn’t be that slow. However, the kick to the groin finally took effect and he rolled on the floor clutching at his family jewels. That was one of them out for the count.
The men around the table were on their feet with pistols pointed at my head, all except for The Don who continued to sit. He had his hand under the table as though he might be holding something.
“Don’t shoot,” The Don ordered and the two men nearest me turned their pistols into clubs by holding them by the barrels. They advanced on me. The other men kept their guns on me, but stayed out of the fight.
The fight was all wrong. Every move I made resulted in having to recalculate. My speed and strength were a fraction of what I’d assumed. In the scenario in my head, these men were dead or fatally wounded and The Don was lying on the floor begging me for mercy.
I factored my actual strength and speed into the fighting engine in my brain. The conclusion that came out said my only hope was to maneuver the fight to the door, take out the two men stalking me and then run for it. The corridor was too long to get to the end before the men with guns would be in a position to shoot, so I’d have to rely on them being terrible shots. As a plan it stank, but it was the only one I had left.
The men advanced warily, glancing at each other as they came. I suspected they were each hoping the other guy would make the first move. Yay me, the little girl they were frightened of.
“Which of you’se guys want to lose his balls first?” For some reason I used a gangster accent that Tarantino would have been in awe of. It had the desired effect, they stopped and hands drifted downwards. I launched into a two-footed flying kick, bouncing off the guy on the left’s chest towards the one on the right. My hands clenched together into a single fist
Again, I was too slow. The first guy went down with what sounded like cracking ribs but the other had time to turn so I wasted my punch on his back. I used his back as a pivot and landed on my feet a couple of yards from the door.
“Stop her!” this from Vinnie, the boss’s son.
He distracted me just long enough for the remaining guy to grab my hand. I spun in his grasp and tried to kick him in the face. He blocked me easily with his arm and pulled me close to him, taking me in a bear hug that squeezed the breath from my body.
The tactical computer in my brain spluttered uselessly. I didn’t have the strength its calculations were based on. I tried kicking him, but he held me up high and kept squeezing. The world went black as I ran out of oxygen.
-
The world spun and sounds vibrated in my head and buzzed loudly, making it difficult to make out The Don’s words.
“Impressive. I should put you in the bare-knuckled fighting ring.”
I tried to spit in his face, but the spittle dribbled down my chin.
“I guess you’re still a whelp. I hear one of their adults can floor a bull. I didn’t even need to use the net.”
I followed his gaze to the ceiling. There was a silvery mist-net up there. It didn’t look like it could stop a butterfly. I’d seen it when I first came into the room and dismissed it as decoration. Deep in my sub-conscious something was shaking its head at me. It seemed to be saying that I should have seen the net and not fought in the first place. They’d be more wary of me now. I shook my head to clear it; the last thing I needed was a disapproving sub-conscious.
Where had it been when I needed it anyway?
Vinnie stepped between his father and me. He was dancing on his toes and looked livid. His nostrils flared and he gesticulated in my face.
“Lou needs an ambulance and Joe’s ribs are cracked. Who do you think you are, whore?”
I saw his fist coming, but none of my muscles were accepting orders so I relaxed, riding the blow in an attempt to take the sting out of it. My head snapped back and I tasted blood in my mouth.
“That’s enough, Vinnie.”
I acted more dazed than I was, letting my head loll forward as if I was unconscious. Someone grabbed my hair and pulled my head up. I looked up as far as my eyes would go and opened my mouth letting blood dribble down my chin. Playing dead is always a good strategy, especially if you don’t have any other.
“Mike, take her to the penthouse, but don’t let her near the other one.”
“I’m going too, sir.” Vinnie again. Probably wanted another crack at an unconscious girl. It might be the only way he could get his rocks off.
“Go, but remember she’s valuable property. If she’s damaged I’ll take it out of your hide.”
“There’re lots of things I can do that don’t involve damage,” Vinnie said. He was almost singing with delight as he spoke.
Lucky me. I made myself a dead weight as Mike dragged me out of the room.
4. Vinnie
Mike dragged me down another corridor, my trainers sliding over the deep pile red carpeting. The Don must have a thing for it. Maybe he screwed his whores on it? When we reached an elevator I stood against Mike, leaning into him. I had recovered enough to stand under my own power, but I didn’t plan to let them know it.
Cuddling against Mike was part of my plan. Pissing off Vinnie was also part of it, as was appearing helpless. I have to say I didn’t have a clue where this would lead me, but keeping the enemy off-guard is always a good tactic. Then you take your chances where you find them.
