I smiled at his charm. The implication, of course, was that I could be one of them. We both stepped out and grabbed a couple of terry-cloth towels.
“And,” he went on, “when I meet them, sometimes that has to be enough. Sometimes it is enough. You want to get with them, you earn them.”
He certainly put a different perspective on the whole thing. I’ve never easily dismissed Janet Marshall and Helena’s other clients as “slack” or “loose” women, not when there are so many double standards we have to put up with about our sexuality, but I was guilty of assuming that each man here wanted to put his thing in as many holes as he could as often as he could. Maybe Neil was that good-as-gold, one-in-ten-thousand man who enjoyed pleasing women, who revelled in the stages of the mating dance rather than just the climax.
No one, of course, is that altruistic, I told myself. He was a good number of years younger than Janet, and men are different. They crave young flesh. And perhaps being with such a strong-willed, successful sister like Janet, well…He seemed too confident in himself to feel emasculated by her, but he might need the games as an outlet for an occasionally bruised male ego.
“So you like the chase.”
“I love the chase.”
“You’re competitive like Lionel?” I teased.
He grimaced at the name. “He’s a pig, like you said. So immature. The kind of guy who probably keeps notches on his bedpost. No point in talking about him.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Let’s just say Lionel and I have had our differences in the past.”
“At poker?”
“No…” He said it slowly, trying to think of a discreet explanation. “No, in another scenario.”
“Business?”
“Kind of, but not quite,” he answered. “I’d rather not talk about him. Wouldn’t think you’d want to either.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I surrendered.
And in just a few casual words, he had given me enough to keep him in mind as a suspect, despite Helena’s loyalty to him. It was obvious he and Lionel had come to loggerheads somehow over Helena’s escort clientele. Janet perhaps? I couldn’t rule it out.
And speaking of Janet, I didn’t know what to think now that the pleasure of the moment was over with Neil. Certainly I didn’t feel guilty, I have to tell you. Janet needed my help as much as Helena, and she knew what I would be doing here. She knew Neil still went to games, just as she did. But neither Helena, Janet or even myself had speculated that I might end up with “her” man.
I had an out. The other players could probably guess with the time passed what we were up to, but no one could be sure, and our shenanigans were technically outside the game.
“We better get out there,” Neil suggested now, and he kissed me on the cheek and fondled my ass, adding, “I’d better go first.”
“Do you think it’ll make much difference?”
“Hey, probably not, but we keep up appearances, right?”
“Okay,” I agreed, and I picked up my bra and looked searchingly around the bathroom, completely at a loss.
Neil laughed at me. “I’ve done that! You are fairly new, aren’t you? Feel like you should have had more clothes when you came in here?”
“Yeah!” I said, and I laughed at myself with him. And then I boldly slung my bra over my shoulder, not even bothering to put it back on.
When we rejoined the others in turn, we each saw we needn’t have gone through the pretence.
When I reappeared, Neil was distributing fresh drinks while a commotion went on behind a circle of the guest/ voyeurs. It seemed to be Lionel’s night as Vivian straddled him in a chair and pumped her hips, making that shrill giggle that would get on my nerves if I heard it too often, making quips of her own to go with those of her spectators. She had a curvy, lovely body for her age, but there was a little too much of the up-for-it Essex girl about her. I watched Lionel grunt and strain, trying to hold off his climax, but he failed to change my mind about his staying power.
3
Later. Dressed. About to go home.
“Can I drop you?” asked Neil politely.
I was coy. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“We might get to like it too much.”
He offered a gentle reminder. “I said I wanted to win you in the game. Don’t you trust me?”
I grabbed his ass briefly and said, “I don’t trust myself.”
I called for a taxi and got a ride to Helena’s even though my own flat was closer. I knew I could sleep over at her place, and I had the bizarre paranoid notion that maybe I ought to play it safe by not going home. This isn’t the movies, I chided myself, feeling a little ridiculous. Nobody’s going to say “Follow that car” and find out where you live. Still. We were dealing with a blackmailer here, someone whose anger was prompting him or her to extremes. And the note had warned Lionel he could “wind up dead.”
“Richmond,” I told the cabby.
As the cab rounded the park, I knew Helena might also be eager for a debriefing. And if I was honest with myself, I was dying to talk about the whole experience. As she let me in, I saw that she’d still been up, having thrown one of her favourite movies in the DVD player, of all things the Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson version of Much Ado About Nothing. Nursing a Baileys on ice and wearing her “dress formal” Japanese robe—the one for company—I realised she had half expected me to drop in.
“I’m told you were a hit,” she announced before I even had a chance to say anything. “Westlake called. Said you have the body of a Nubian goddess.”
“I hope you corrected him.”
“You’re not a goddess?”
“Nuba as opposed to Nubian.”
She told me to go ahead and fix myself a drink, and I reached for the Baileys. Then I kicked off my heels, stretched my feet out on her coffee table and proceeded to vent about Lionel. “Helena, where did you get this guy? He’s arrogant, conceited, smarmy, and he’s giving our men a bad name! I can’t believe you get repeat business with this jerk.”
She gave me an understanding smile and rolled her eyes skyward. “To be truthful,” she sighed, “I don’t. Well, not for the kind of services a Janet Marshall or one of my other premium customers expects. The young man’s so gorgeous, I had high hopes for him in the beginning, but now he only gets calls to be arm candy at some Barbican event or a charity awards function. The package looks great, but no real delivery. It’s one of the reasons I’ve assumed I must be the target of this all and not simply Janet. I mean, why Lionel? Why not send a note to Neil? Or Raymond or Bobby?”
I tapped my nails against the glass of half-drunk Baileys. “Too early to say.”
We drank. On the screen, Michael Keaton was doing his Beetlejuice imitation for the part of Constable Dogberry. Denzel was still gorgeous as Don Pedro, and Keanu Reeves still sucked as Don John—in my humble reviewer’s opinion.
“Teresa,” she prompted.
“What?”
“I remember that look, I know that look,” said Helena. “You’re waiting for something. What is it?”
I smiled. She had guessed the truth, so I might as well fill her in. Yes, I had to wait because there weren’t many other leads I could follow up at the moment, and maybe if I let her in on my thinking, it would buoy my client’s confidence in me.
“Here’s the thing,” I explained. “Lionel had himself a good night. For someone supposed to be shaken up over blackmail and a death threat, he seemed pretty full of himself this evening. Now maybe that’s macho overcompensation, but still, he came out for the game. So yeah, I want to see what happens next. If our bad guy—or girl—is truly plugged in, they’ll know what happened tonight. And they may not like being dismissed. They could send him another note or…”
“Or?” asked Helena.
“There’s another possibility, but you may not like it,” I said.
She waited.
“
According to the reviews, he’s all flash, no fire. He certainly didn’t do anything for me, but I don’t want to be biased. Now if there really are better guys to go after—whether it’s spite against you or to squeeze money out of them—why him? Unless—”
She saw where I was going. “Unless he’s cooked this whole thing up himself and lied about his note? I can’t believe it!”
“He did sleep with Janet,” I argued. “And she did tell us he didn’t exactly make her toes curl. He strikes me as a number one egomaniac. Maybe his vanity got bruised, and he’s decided a little emotional cruelty and cash would do wonders for his self-image. But we’ll have to wait and see if another note comes.”
And if it did, and if it was genuine, I had other suspects in mind. If George Westlake thought I was so hot that he could rave about me to Helena, maybe he resented how Lionel got the first taste of a new player. Perhaps resenting Lionel was a well-established habit for him.
And then there was Neil—Neil who got the job done when that weasel couldn’t break a sweat, Janet’s man Neil. Maybe he didn’t want to be Janet’s man any longer but still bore Lionel a grudge. Two strong suspects if another note came, and there was nothing to say that just because another one was delivered, it would go to either Lionel or Janet. Maybe our blackmailer would turn on someone else.
I had deliberately phrased it “bad guy or girl” with Helena because, of course, I couldn’t rule out the women. If Vivian was behind it all, she put on one hell of a performance tonight, especially when she was happy to fuck Lionel in front of all the players. She seemed to be the only one so far impressed with his prowess. I asked Helena what Vivian Mapling’s story was and if there was any friction between her and Janet.
“Yes, actually,” said Helena, as if considering it for the first time. “I noticed she and Janet never quite got on, but I never paid much attention. After all, my clients don’t usually mix except at the games, and they still have to behave themselves there. Vivian’s not exactly English, well, not completely English. She’s got family on one side from Zimbabwe—their kind is probably still calling it Rhodesia. God! Vivian’s one of those strange girls who profess to be liberal but still leave you with a question mark over what goes on in their fluffy heads. Likes black men, likes Lionel and would love to move on to Neil, so you can see where Janet’s in her way. You don’t think…? Teresa, I told you, she’s in the market for a husband. I can’t see her taking her diversions with Lionel or anyone else seriously.”
“Like I said, Hel, it’s early,” I reminded her.
Vivian might not consider Lionel husband material, but sexual obsession could have a twisted logic all its own. Maybe Vivian didn’t like competition, and she had always resented the ugly little social presumption that Janet, by virtue of simply being black, could swoop in and take the hunkiest black male at the table. That would explain a little of the frost I felt from her tonight, a matter of colour as well as gender. And why couldn’t the notes to Lionel and Janet come from a woman? Manipulating them through threats struck me as a very feminine ploy.
But the language didn’t fit. Vivian Mapling must be around forty. Would she really call Janet an “old bag” when she was at best only a decade younger than Janet? Or use a term like “old bitches” for Lionel’s note when she was one of Lionel’s clients herself? Hmm…
A greater mystery was Ayako. Watching, always watching and reserved. What was going on with her?
Helena’s mind was still on Lionel, resisting the notion that this could be an inside job, defending him almost as passionately as she had spoken up for Neil the first night I was briefed.
“He’s by no means my favourite date for the girls, but he’s more of a jerk than in the bastard category,” she was saying. “And he doesn’t need the money, Teresa. I told you—he works for one of the top European mining concerns. Makes far more money than Janet, at least at what she does right now.”
I gave that a pensive “Hmmm.” Money wasn’t everything, and I wasn’t about to rule out my theory just yet.
“I hear you met Neil,” she ventured. The way she pronounced the word “met” drove right through entendre straight into hyperbole. If tongues played at the games, they also wagged.
I laughed through my embarrassment. “Yes, I did.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned, collapsing back on her sofa melodramatically. “I was afraid of that! I knew he would zero in on you. You’re just his type. He doesn’t go for loud and brassy or shy, mousy types, he likes quiet, self-confident women who—”
“Helena!” I broke in, still laughing nervously. “We just messed around, we—look, we didn’t have sex, okay?”
“This is getting far too complicated,” she said, more to herself than to me. “This could well blow up in my face. Maybe we should let Neil in on what you’re really there for, and then maybe he won’t put the moves on you again.”
“Hey,” I said. “Number one, I’m a big girl. Number two, there’s already enough people who know what I’m up to, and number three, whatever you and Janet think, I’m not prepared to rule anyone out yet.”
“But ‘messing around’ with Neil could be dangerous if he’s the one,” she argued.
I kissed my teeth and nodded. “You’re the one who brought me in and you knew I’d have to do a certain amount of messing around full stop.”
Helena shook her head at me. “And I’m beginning to think I’m a bloody fool, putting you in danger like this. Look at you, with this ‘trouble is my business’ thing going on! You’re Lara Croft now, are you? Pour us out another drink, darling. I think I need it.”
“You’re my friend,” I told her. “I’m here to help. And by the way, thank you for the nice, fat advance cheque.”
“Is there anything else to do besides sit back and wait?”
“Plenty. Tomorrow I get off my ass and start doing background checks on our players.”
“If it’s financial, I don’t think you’ll get any surprises,” said Helena. “I do regular credit checks on all my customers and escorts, and there’s no one living beyond their means. Some blokes who get themselves into trouble think escort work will mean quick money, but I turn them down flat. If they’re in debt, they’ll harass and phone you all the time for bookings, and I don’t need the headache. And the women are more than solvent.”
“It’s not that stuff I’m really looking for,” I replied. “I don’t doubt they’re rolling in it. I need to get a bead on who might have pissed off whom, who might have burned someone in a business deal. If there’s more than your operation hosting these games then a player can always go elsewhere if he doesn’t like the faces at the table.”
Helena brightened. “Then I might be able to help with that.”
“Oh?”
“You can go where I can’t follow.”
It wasn’t exactly true. She might have got into the scene, but she would have stood out, and I’m not sure she would have been terribly comfortable. The name of the game wasn’t strip poker but strip dominoes, Jamaican style. And the location wasn’t a genteel SW house—oh, no, it was a club off Stroud Green Road near Finsbury Park tube station. Jeez, I never knew this place existed, I told myself. And I came out regularly to this neighbourhood to see friends, pick up hair products and check out stuff at the New Beacon Bookshop.
The club was a cavernous, smoky and barely legal joint. Instead of the careful screening, credit checks and clinic tests, this came down to the natural selection of the bouncers sizing you up. Honeys and babes were given a wave through while the playas and the scrubs got the rigorous scrutiny. There were white chicks here, median age around 19, but they wouldn’t have got in without a black date, and I doubt they’d have a clue where to find the place without one. The unofficial national anthem of the game was Nelly’s “It’s Getting Hot in Here,” and as Sean Paul turned to Jamelia, then segued into Jay Z, you didn’t need the music to tell you this was a whole different scene.
This was free-for-all spectator sport, no s
queamishness here. There must have been five games going on with large crowds gathered at each one, and you heard the crack of the bones flying down like a hail of construction hammers. It was one of the few things that could be heard above the music, the shouts and the laughing. Players didn’t sit so much as they stood over a table and shifted nervously or danced to the tunes, their whole attitude of play keenly watched and reviewed as much as their moves and their bodies. “A little bit of uh, uh” and as a tall, shirtless guy with nut-brown skin and a broken nose cleaned the others out, he slammed his fist into his palm, yelled “Yessss!” And he pointed to a girl across the table, saying, “Give it up!”
She was pretty, a caramel beauty with a clearly Beyoncé-inspired hairstyle and dye job, reduced at the moment to her leather mini and lacy bra, her panties and top already deposited on the table. She gushed and covered her mouth with her hand, then arched her eyebrows at him and smiled as the onlookers shouted their encouragement.
“Here we go!”
“Come on, babes, come on—”
“Oh, look at them luscious titties, man!”
The girlfriends pretending to cover their boys’ eyes, the boys fending them off, and there she was, twirling like a model and dancing a couple of steps, her breasts full and exquisite with large areolae and her right nipple pierced with a silver ring. She gave him a challenging come here gesture with her fingers waving back to her palm, and the “Ohhhh!” welled up from the crowd as he stalked over to her and gently pulled on the ring with his teeth. His hands slid down and pushed up her skirt so that the audience behind them could see her pert little ass, and she pushed him off and made a show of wagging her finger at him. This was game five, and by game six, they’d be going at it anyway.
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