I KILL

by Lex Lander

  ‘You see, Bea,’ de Bruin scoffed, ‘he thinks you are too young for him. Perhaps Margot is more his type.’ He repeated his trick with the halter on Margot. Her breasts were in a different category altogether, with pronounced red-brown nipples, which she rubbed and tweaked as she came round the table to me, teeth bared. She was well rehearsed. She stopped with her breasts inches from my nose, close enough for me to make out the blue latticework of veins under the taut skin. The effect on my prick was devastating. After all, I was only flesh and blood. I glanced uncomfortably at the two men sitting across from us. They were staring at the girl, but without expression, as if the flesh carnival was an everyday feature at the Chico.

  Margot shook her breasts at me, impatiently, demanding a reaction. Her nipples had distended to the size of hazel nuts. Had it not been for the sneering presence opposite, I might have been tempted.

  Disturbed by my own weakness, I said gruffly, ‘What’s the strip show to do with the matter of you and me and Clair Power?’

  The sneer vanished. De Bruin left off fondling Margot’s backside, and leaned across the table.

  ‘How would you like to make some money? A lot of money.’

  The question was so unexpected I laughed in his face.

  ‘Doing what?’

  He snapped his fingers, and Bea and Margot fled from the table, adjusting their halters as they ran. Their Master’s voice, and he hadn’t uttered a syllable. I always believed that kind of thing only happened in Arab harems.

  ‘Amongst other things I have a publishing business,’ he said, idly tapping his empty glass with his left hand, the stump of his amputated pinky jutting out. ‘Well, that is what I call it. We produce movies for DVD and Internet. The material is specialist … sorry, specialised, and the demand for it grows more every year.’

  I was ahead of him. Or thought I was. ‘You mean porn?’

  ‘Porn, yes, yes, of course.’ Impatiently. ‘But there are many kinds of porn. Soft porn, hard porn. Fetish, BDSM, torture porn. Even snuff porn. In any case the profits are better than you can imagine. Fortunes are being made, by me and others.’

  He picked something up off the floor, tossed it on the table in front of me. It was a bulky envelope. It was not sealed so I peeked inside. It was stuffed with mauve €500 banknotes. I placed it on the table between us.

  ‘Very generous. Is this to cover the cost of my gas for coming here?’

  ‘It is less than one day’s receipts from subscriptions to my websites in the UK.’

  If he meant to impress me, he succeeded. It looked like a lot of money. I noticed Bea and Margot watching from the doorway.

  ‘What’s the proposition, de Bruin? Are you offering to pay me to star in a dirty movie with the girls?’

  ‘That as well, if you like.’ The cigar was back in his mouth, waggling. ‘But, no, let us be serious. The proposition is a piece of the action.’ The outdated Americanism was in keeping with the rest of his posturing. Phoney as a plastic suit of armour. ‘There is a vacancy for director of my UK business. Not just a job, as a partner.’

  ‘I’m not interested in that kind of action.’

  The cigar described an airy curve.

  ‘You don’t have to be. You sign checks, you sign receipts, you hire and fire beautiful girls. You fuck them too if you feel like it. It is a legitimate business.’ He tapped the envelope and added, ‘You get paid in cash.’

  ‘How much is in there?’

  ‘Fifty thousand.’ His bulging eyes glinted. ‘This is the retainer. You will make this much every two weeks, for two days work a week.’ A snigger. ‘If you can call it work.’

  I mulled it over. Not the offer itself, but the over-the-topness of it and the motivation. The breeze played on my face, flicked my hair on and off my brow. Down in the cove the sea burst against a spit of rock, throwing up an arc of spray, while further out, in the strait, shipping crept across the horizon, like models on a war games board. Routine sensations, routine sights. Yet my conviction that I had been lured into a trap was growing. In the half-hour I had been sitting here, with the Beretta reshaping my backbone, no new customers had shown up. Neutral territory? I didn’t think so. De Bruin either owned the Chico Bar, or the owner was in his pocket.

  ‘So?’ De Bruin’s voice quavered with impatience. ‘What do you say to my offer?’

  No matter how busy my brain, I would keep my responses natural and my suspicions to myself.

  ‘You must want something more from me than my services,’ I hedged, resolved to act out this farce to its foregone conclusion. But to de Bruin it was no farce, as his reply made clear.

  ‘Nothing at all.’ More puffing at the cigar. Ash tumbled to the table, was wiped away by the breeze. ‘All I am requiring is that you cease to meet or contact Mrs Power and her daughter. Easy, hey? You do nothing, you get fifty thousand euros now, and a guaranteed income for life. Like they say in England, money for old rope.’

  The cards were now face up on the table at last. Except for the joker, still buried in the pack. The joker that was the key to it all, the joker that would reveal why de Bruin sought to separate me from Clair.

  ‘Are you in love with her or something?’ I asked him bluntly.

  His face closed up.

  ‘My interest in her has nothing to do with you. I am making you a commercial proposition to stay away from her. It is a business deal. It also happens I am thinking you are a man I can do business with.’ He forced the irritation off his face, replaced it with an ingratiating smirk. ‘Now … do you accept? A simple yes, or a simple no. Simple, eh?’

  Crunch time. I leaned forward, partly to ease the discomfort of the lump of ironmongery in my waistband, partly to make it more accessible.

  ‘No, de Bruin, I don’t accept.’ I tensed involuntarily as I spoke. ‘If you really want to know, I think you’re off-the-wall crazy. I think you’re one sick puppy.’

  He reddened, then shot a glance at the beefcake boy and his Arab companion. The pair were sure to be in cahoots with him. Odds three-to-one, then. The girls didn’t count. I hoped. A certain girl karate expert had once shown me the error of underestimating the alleged weaker sex.

  But de Bruin hadn’t yet expended all the arrows in his quiver. A second, fatter, envelope made the trip from floor to table top.

  ‘Perhaps you value your contribution more highly. There is another hundred thousand.’

  I didn’t react, so he tapped the envelope with a thick forefinger. ‘A hundred and fifty thousand euros. It’s yours, here and now, you need do nothing. Just agree to leave the Powers alone.’

  That was when, heedless of consequence, my cool deserted me.

  ‘Fuck you!’ I snarled and leapt to my feet. My fist smashed into de Bruin’s ear. It was like hitting a concrete slab, but he went over in a somersault, chair and all.

  After that events moved in a fast, confused farrago. De Bruin was temporarily out of it. Happy to relate, the girls did not rush out to give a demonstration of karate, kung fu, or kamikaze. They retired behind a slammed door, which left only the beefcake boy, who flexed biceps and looked dangerous, and his Arab chum, who just looked out of his depth.

  While I was still blowing on my bruised knuckles, around the corner of the building came another duo, both Arabs in burnous and turbans. Both brandishing daggers, straight out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, not to mention every tourist bazaar in Tangier. I almost laughed at the amateurishness of it. De Bruin might be a king in the world of smut, but he was out of his depth in my world.

  Then the sound of running feet to the rear alerted me to a new threat. Heading this way at a canter were two men in shorts and singlets, late of a certain disabled station wagon. With de Bruin also surfacing from the wreckage of the table and parasol, the odds were looking sicker by the second. Amateurs or not, they were numerous enough to do me harm.

  Time to level the odds. I yanked the Beretta free. It came easily, removing no more than a couple of layers of my skin.

&
nbsp; ‘Hold it!’ I shouted, and nobody was running anymore. Nobody was shouting orders or flashing daggers. Even the gulls seemed to go quiet, leaving only the crash of surf and the bumpety-bump of my heart.

  I hooked down the forward grip and flipped the selector onto its three-burst setting. The two with the daggers were closest, so I covered them first. Then, when I was sure we had an understanding, I swung the pistol through a semi-circle to where two statues from the station wagon stood, comically arrested in mid-stride, then finally back to the mastermind himself.

  De Bruin was holding a handkerchief to his flattened ear and hadn’t moved from the table. Beefcake slowly turned his head towards him, seeking guidance.

  ‘All right, all right,’ de Bruin shouted, flapping the handkerchief like a flag of surrender. ‘We let you go, Melville.’

  Big of him. Being let go wasn’t enough though. I took a backward peek at the station wagon pair. They were behaving themselves, even to the extent of clasping their hands behind their necks, unasked. Arabs have a lot of respect for guns.

  I beckoned de Bruin. ‘Come here. The rest of you, on your bellies.’ I repeated the instruction in French.

  De Bruin stayed put. The rest, taking their cue from him, stayed vertical.

  I lifted the gun and ripped off a three round mini-burst, a hacking cough of gunfire. Birds erupted by the hundred from every ledge and crevice, dimming the sun and blotting out all sound with their cries. The blizzard of thrashing wings took a while to disperse. When quiet was restored I lowered the long barrel to fire a second burst, a fraction above head height. To a man, and in concert, the minions hit terra firma, and de Bruin started walking towards me, albeit on dragging heels. Amazing what a little lead slinging will do.

  De Bruin stopped, leaving a meter of so of space between us. He licked his slug-like lips.

  ‘Two hundred thousand euros,’ he said. ‘I will give two hundred thousand. A hundred and fifty now, the rest later today.’

  ‘You never give up, do you?’

  I went up to him, and we stood there, a foot apart, breathing hard, glaring at each other. Then I lashed him across the bridge of his nose with the gun barrel, so abruptly he had no hope of avoiding the blow, and so violently that the jolt travelled all the way to my shoulder. A shout of pain, a gush of blood, and he fell to his knees in the gravel.

  I stepped away from him, panting a little.

  ‘Let that be the end of it, de Bruin.’

  Giorgy called me on my cell phone. He was brief. ‘The Al’hauri job is off,’ he said flatly.

  When I thought about my lack of progress over the past week I was more relieved than disappointed.

  ‘It’s your lost deposit,’ I returned, and let it go at that. You don’t discuss a cancelled contract on an hotel terrace. Anyway, with $200,000-plus already banked, I could afford to be philosophical.

  Over a second beer I pondered the reason for the cancellation, a phenomenon without precedent. Was my professionalism in doubt? Was it on account of my dawdling? No, scratch that for a reason. Giorgy himself had urged me to take it slowly. If he was growing impatient, an ultimatum would have been issued. Nobody, not even the Syndicate (especially not the Syndicate), writes off two hundred Gs without having examined and discarded all alternatives.

  Professionally, I concluded, I had no cause for self-reproach. At a personal level, I was pleased. It would leave the field clear for me to focus on winning Clair.

  As far as that went, the only impending squall on an otherwise placid sea was Rik de Bruin. Our mutual enmity was now out in the open. After the pistol-whipping at the Chico Bar I would have to watch my back. His nose was bloody, but I had to assume he would still carry on plotting. I didn’t under-estimate the man. He had demonstrated a willingness to pay mega-bucks to take Clair from me. Fantastic? Yes, but it was happening. It was a fact. Be it lust, love, or midsummer madness, he was bent on having her. What was more, the initiatives were all on his side. To stay ahead of him I would have to perform the impossible feat of staying alert twenty-four hours a day.

  The beer and several vodkas gradually took the edge off my chagrin and I gave up brooding. A waiter, red-fezzed, matching bumfreezer jacket, responded with alacrity to my raised finger.

  ‘Encore un vodka, s’il vous plait.’

  Strictly for medicinal purposes, let me say.

  It was after midnight. In my room I picked up the phone and called Clair’s number. It rang for so long I thought she must be asleep and was about to hang up when the receiver was lifted.

  ‘Yes?’ Very wary.

  ‘It’s me. I didn’t wake you, did I?’

  ‘No, no. I was in the bathroom, removing the gunge. Anything wrong?’

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  A tiny inhalation of breath, a pause.

  ‘Not much.’ A longer pause. ‘Well, nothing actually.’

  ‘Good. Describe yourself.’

  An incredibly salacious giggle was followed by the burr of a dead line.

  Ten

  We dined à trois at the Marhaba Palace, a typical Moroccan eating establishment with a mini-orchestra and a boy who does the celebrated Rif tray dance. All very fine if you go for the Muslim concept of music and dancing boys. Clair lapped it up anyhow, which was good enough for me. Afterwards we went for a wander in the Medina amid the jostle of late night shoppers and gawkers, Clair and I hand in hand, Lizzy scouting ahead, detouring into this bazaar and that boutique.

  ‘Hey, look at this!’ she effused, trying a gold lamé caftan up against her. ‘How much is three thousand dirhams in dollars?’

  ‘You’d never wear it,’ Clair said, hauling her away under the resentful scowl of the hovering saleswoman. ‘Let’s find something more suitable.’

  ‘Suitable? Fucking drab, you mean!’

  ‘Lizzy!’ Clair said in outrage. ‘Don’t use that kind of language with me.’

  Lizzy glowered incandescently then shrugged and muttered an apology of sorts. We drifted into a jewellery store and, my ears shut to Clair’s protests, I treated her daughter to a heavy bangle in antique Berber silver that looked like a manacle on her bony wrist.

  ‘Alan, you’re super!’ a mollified Lizzy carolled, and as I counted out endless notes into a creased brown talon she planted a smacking kiss on my cheek.

  I made light of the expenditure. ‘It’s only money.’

  Clair slid her arm through mine and nuzzled up against me.

  ‘That was extravagant and definitely undeserved,’ she reproved, ‘and I ought to make her give it back. But I’m an indulgent mother, so I won’t.’ Her lips settled fleetingly on my chin or thereabouts. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It was my pleasure, really. Now let’s find something for you.’

  She tittered girlishly. ‘You’ve spent enough on us this evening.’

  ‘What else should I spend it on? I don’t exactly scrape by on welfare, you know.’

  Thankfully, she didn’t take my boast as a cue to probe further into how I did scrape by. So far she had shown no tendency to pry.

  We coasted along with the human tide, down the narrow, airless street, importuned with tiresome regularity by youths, persistent and prevalent as flies at a picnic.

  ‘No, we don’t want a guide,’ I would snap as they fell into step beside me. ‘And I don’t want any bloody kif. Maintenant, foutez le camp!’

  They seemed to get the message.

  At a crossroads, under the walls of the Royal Summer Palace, we came upon a store specializing in jewellery made from coral. Clair went into raptures over this stuff and, since she couldn’t decide which piece she preferred, I forked out for a co-ordinated set, comprising necklace, bracelet, tiara, and ring. André Warner, big spending fool. In truth, I was enjoying having someone to spend on.

  ‘You mustn’t, you mustn’t.’ Clair was at once agitated and thrilled.

  ‘Chill out, sweetheart. It only sounds a lot in the Mickey Mouse money they use here.’

  With thes
e purchases, though it was not my agenda, I seemed to have bought a large chunk of goodwill. Clair’s kiss was bold lips-to-lips and conveyed much more than gratitude. Lizzy affected not to notice, but for a tightening of her lips. Learning to live with the idea of her mother having a boy friend was never going to be easy for her.

  In the Petit Socco plaza we pounced gratefully on the only spare table outside the Café Central, and for a while watched the world go by – and “world” was not a misnomer, for the nationalities represented were too multifarious to name or count: from the obvious, well-fed American, groaning under cameras and optional extras, through olive-skinned Latin, to moon-faced Chinese and blacker-than-ebony East African.

  Claire and I had ordered mint tea, with a light beer for Lizzy. She downed it in a gulp before, with a flash of teeth, deserting us for a boutique next door, to browse over racks of dresses and other feminine frippery. Whenever she took off like that it made us nervous, but Clair was adamant about not being over-protective.

  ‘I can’t watch her every minute of every day,’ she explained.

  I admired her enlightened approach.

  ‘Brave of you.’

  ‘So long as it doesn’t turn out to be foolhardiness.’ Her eyes sparkled as they focused on me. ‘That aside, she’s giving us a few minutes alone together.’

  ‘Great, so let’s not squander the gift.’ I enclosed her hand in mine. ‘Have you thought any more about my offer?’ Even as I resurrected the subject, I was unsure which I feared most – acceptance or rejection.

  ‘I’ve done little else.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s your last full day here,’ I pointed out. ‘Even if you don’t make a decision, we ought to do something special to celebrate the end of our vacation. With or without you, I’ll be leaving on Friday at the latest.’

  ‘Yes … I see.’ She bit her lip. ‘But tomorrow, I … I shan’t be seeing you, Alan.’

  I made no effort to keep my disappointment private.

  ‘Please don’t be upset,’ she said, laying a consoling hand my arm. I was not consoled. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to … I do. Very much.’