by Darren Dash
“You don’t look like one of them,” she said. “They were rougher. More cuts, scars, bruises.”
“I’ve been out of it a long time,” I shrugged. “You heal. Besides, I was one of the better fighters, only rarely took a bad beating. And I had brains enough to quit while I was ahead.”
“How good were you?” she asked quietly.
“I was a handy southpaw, won most of my fights.” I chuckled ruefully. “But that was no big thing. A lot of the guys who fight bare-knuckle have never boxed legitimately. They’re down on their luck, have no other options, come to it when they’re in a dark place, no dreams, no ambitions. Some are big and fast, but they have no learnt skills to bring to the ring. I was pretty experienced, so they were rarely fair contests.”
She looked me up and down, then grabbed me and pulled me even closer, until our lips were almost touching. “Listen,” she whispered hoarsely. “Last night I was just fooling, teasing you, trying to get a reaction, knowing I could play you any way I liked if you made a move on me. Now it’s different.”
I could feel the kick of her heart as her chest was rammed up against mine. Not the worst feeling in the world.
“Let’s go at it like cats, Eyrie. Here. Now.” She pulled my hands up so they were on her hips. “I won’t ever breathe a word. It’ll be our secret. Nothing to do with Lewis. Look at me. You’ll see I’m not lying.”
And she wasn’t, if I was any judge. There was lust in those pretty young eyes. Her blood was boiling and (crude but true) her juices were pumping. She could be mine if I wanted, no comebacks to worry about. A wild fuck, a calming cuddle, and she’d have forgotten about it by morning, never a word to anyone.
“You barely know me,” I murmured.
She shrugged. “It’s just sex. Doesn’t mean much to me.”
The only times I’d ever heard someone say that before had been in my fantasies. It was what part of me had been waiting for all my life. An adolescent dream come true. A perfectly formed, exquisitely sculpted woman with all the low sexual morals of a horny teenage boy.
I prised my hands away and took a step back. Smiled regretfully.
“No.”
“Eyrie, don’t be –”
I put a finger to her lips and shook my head. “It would be a mistake.”
“But I won’t tell. I’m not trying to trick you. I just want –”
“I know,” I said kindly. “But it would hang over me forever. You wouldn’t mean to say anything, but your tongue could slip one day, or you could talk in your sleep. I know I’m going to regret this for a long, long time – you’re the most beautiful woman to ever offer herself to me – but you’re not mine. I don’t know if you’re Lewis Brue’s or some other gangster’s, but you’re certainly not mine. I won’t risk my life for a quick screw, not even with someone as stunning as you.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Fucking Lewis,” she muttered. “Sets me up with the one fucking guy in London who has a level head on his shoulders. OK, Mr Knight In Shining Armour.” She looped her arm round mine and smiled. “At least walk me back to the car. Or is this close contact too much for you?”
“This is fine,” I told her. “I might even stretch to…” I gave her bum a pat, “…a little bit of a fumbling grope, if the lady has no objections.”
“The lady’s just fine,” she giggled and we walked back to the car, slowly, truly at ease with one another for the first time since she’d knocked on my door the night before.
SIX — A BRAWL
I took her to MURPHY’S for a few drinks. It was a claustrophobic, nasty joint, populated by mean-spirited drunks who liked to scrap over nothing to entertain themselves. You could expect to see tables flying, boots connecting with heads, and knives flashing any normal Friday night. But we arrived shortly after a savage battle, one which had almost gutted the place. The police had been summoned and nearly all of the regulars had been carted off. We stayed for a couple of very quick drinks, but when it became obvious there would be no further action, we moved on to DEL’S.
DEL’S was run by a one-armed gypsy who served his customers with a sneer and wasn’t averse to spitting in the odd pint or two. He hired staff for their surly dispositions and it was in all likelihood the least welcoming bar in the entire city. You didn’t get many fights here, but it was usually packed with the pick of London’s lowlifes, and when it came to people-watching, they didn’t come any scuzzier or more luridly fascinating than the locals at DEL’S. I had a hunch Toni would enjoy the walk-of-life show, even if it wasn’t hi-def.
A couple of tables near the back were reserved for gamblers, and they were always buzzing, fools from all areas of the world coming to take on the infamous in-house card sharks. I was amazed that people found out about this place – you wouldn’t find many reviews if you Googled it – but I guess gamblers have their own grapevine.
A large glass tank full of snakes was perched on one end of the bar. Every few weeks or so, some moron would put a fist or foot through it and the joint would have to be evacuated while the snakes were being recovered. That was the only time you’d ever see Del smile, when the snakes were loose and the customers were screaming and running for their lives. Rumour had it, if the tank went too long without getting busted, Del paid a stooge to do the job for him.
Toni’s nose wrinkled when we walked in. Del had some sort of a deal going with the health department, because the bar hadn’t been cleaned in about six years, yet had never been shut down. The dust was nearly as thick as my TV set in places, and you could have gone for a swim in old beer spills in some areas.
“This is a shithole,” Toni complained as we pushed through the crowd to a beer-stained table. (I hoped they were only beer stains.)
“You want to leave?” I asked.
“Are you crazy?” she whooped. “I love it!”
She cheered as a fat man in a pair of shorts and nothing else jumped on a table and began vomiting over those nearby. Cheered even more when a biker wrapped a steel chain around the fat man’s skull and dragged him to the floor for a beating. She’d have joined in if I hadn’t kept a firm hold on her.
“This is unbelievable,” she said, watching a tired stripper blowing a table of Chinese tourists, crawling from one to the other on her hands and knees. “Christ, look at that guy. He’s sticking a snake up… Jesus!” Her face paled with shock. Then she started laughing hysterically. Threw her arms around me and hugged hard. “Eyrie Brown, I take it all back. You’re a guide of the highest order. First the fights, now this. You should go into tourism. You could charge a fortune to –”
A voice cut her short. Icy and cynical.
“Look what the rats dragged in. Toni fucking Curtis. As if this place wasn’t hellish enough already.”
Toni stopped dead and I turned to see who was talking. A young woman, maybe a few years older than Toni, was on her feet and grinning viciously. Tall, about five-eleven. Dark hair carefully plastered to her skull to look like a cap, one lock curled under her left eye and stuck to her cheek. Dressed in a red two-piece suit with a yellow shirt. Too classy for a place like this. Obviously slumming it for a giggle. A pair of bodyguards, one on either side. They stood in closer when they saw me looking. Hard faces. Built like wrestlers.
Toni looked around slowly. “Golding Mironova,” she cooed. “So this is where the washed-up whores come when they’ve nowhere else to go.”
The other girl didn’t flinch at the insult. “This your new fuck?” she asked, nodding in my direction. “You need to be careful,” she told me. “That one likes to make men eat her shit and pass it back to her when they kiss. Isn’t that right, Toni sweetie?”
“That’s what your brother’s telling people, so I guess it must be. He should know. Strange thing is, he told me the same thing about you. Said it was the only thing he didn’t like about screwing you. Well, that and your liking for dogs.”
That wiped the smile off Golding Mironova’s face. “You bitch,” she snarled and stepped closer. I
got between the ladies quickly and held Toni back. Mironova’s bodyguards jerked her away from us and squared up to me. One was my size, the other a few inches taller. They looked like they knew what they were doing and I didn’t fancy my chances if this kicked off.
“Does Jeb Howard know you’re back in London?” Mironova screeched.
“He drove me here himself,” Toni sneered, struggling to get clear of my grip.
“Only place Jeb Howard would drive you is to the morgue.” Mironova pushed her bodyguards aside and winked at Toni, who was still trying to get past me, wriggling like an eel. “I bet he’d be real interested to hear you’re here. Bet he’d pay big for that information, hmm?”
“Be a change, you getting paid for something other than your snatch.” But there was a trace of fear in Toni’s voice. She was worried. I could sense it and so could Mironova, who smiled lazily and stroked my chin with a long fingernail, never taking her eyes off Toni. I let her scratch and didn’t move, my own eyes on the bodyguards.
“I’ll be over there for a while,” she said softly to Toni, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the bar, nodding towards a dark, damp corner. (All the corners were dark and damp in DEL’S.) “I never put pleasure before business, even when a bitch like you is involved. If you come over before you leave and offer me a disgusting amount of money – it will need to be amazingly disgusting –I’ll forget about seeing you and ringing Jeb Howard. Lord knows, you’re not the sort of sorry cooze I like having to remember.” She blew Toni a kiss. “See you soon, sweetie. And in case you’re wondering, I’ll want cash. And by the way,” she leered, “love your hair.”
She moved on with a self-satisfied chuckle.
Toni growled, fingers digging into me. There’d be bruises in the morning. “Why didn’t you let me at her? I’d have ripped out her eyes and used them as snooker balls.”
“What about those two walking wrecking balls she’s with?” I said. “You’d have ripped out their eyes too?”
“That’s what you’re being paid for.”
“No,” I replied. “I’m being paid to help you keep a low profile, not start fights that will draw attention. Besides, it doesn’t matter what I’m like with my fists, one doesn’t beat two, not when they’re built like that. They’d have ground me down and moved on to you.”
“We could have handled them,” she sulked.
“No,” I said again, leading her away. “The first rule of survival – I learnt this long ago, and I’m surprised you haven’t yet – is know your limitations. Never take on more than you can handle. If they’d come at us, I’d have fought, and given it my all, but alone, unless I’d got very lucky, I’d have been on a hiding to nothing.”
“You weren’t alone,” she said. “You had me for backup.”
I sighed. Mironova and her goons had sat and were sharing a joke. “What gives?” I asked. “Who is she? Who’s Jeb Howard? How much trouble are we in?”
“She’s nothing,” Toni said heatedly, “a jumped-up whore with a –”
“Toni,” I snapped. “Don’t bullshit me. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s coming. So tell me, who’s Jeb Howard?”
“A gangster like Lewis,” she said, pulling a face. “You haven’t heard of him? He’s pretty big round these parts.”
“I told you before, this isn’t my game, I don’t know the players. Now, if she tells him she saw you, will he come after us?”
“She probably won’t be able to tell him,” Toni said. “She’s not as important as she thinks. A guy like Jeb Howard isn’t that easy to get hold of. I doubt she could track him down quickly.”
“But if she does?”
Toni shrugged uneasily. “We have history. He took a serious dislike to me some time back, and that was reinforced more recently. If Jeb hears that I’m in town, he’ll come hunting and he won’t come alone.” She looked at me. “Are you known here? If we slipped out, made sure they didn’t follow us, could we go back to your place and hole up?”
I shook my head. “I don’t come here often, but I’m known. If someone asks questions, it won’t be too hard to trace me. Can we buy her off like she said?”
Toni pulled a face. “No chance. That was just her playing with me before she sank in her claws. Even if I paid her – not that I could get my hands on that much cash that quickly – she’d still look to go to him, to drop me in the shit.”
“OK. We’ll phone Brue.”
“No.”
“You’ve got a better idea?”
She chewed her lower lip, genuinely troubled. “We can’t ring Lewis. He doesn’t want anyone to know I’m in London, but in the event that I’m made, he especially doesn’t want anyone to link me to him. He wouldn’t help us if we rang. We have to sort this out ourselves.”
“You’re sure?”
“Call him if you like,” she hissed. “You’ll just be wasting time. He won’t be drawn into something like this.”
Toni watched as one of Mironova’s bodyguards stood and headed for the toilet. Her face lit up. “Go after him,” she murmured, ducking low.
“The bodyguard?”
“Yeah. Target him in the toilet. Disable him.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
She grew cagey. “Teach that bitch a lesson.”
I grabbed her. “What do you mean?”
Toni smiled and picked up her drink. “Toss this in her face. Pull out some of her hair. Throw some slaps her way. Golding Mironova is vain as they come. She likes to think she’s tough, but if I knock her about, show her up in front of all these people, she won’t go ratting to Jeb Howard. Won’t want to admit she was here, for fear he’d find out how I disgraced her in public.”
“You’re sure?” She sounded confident but I thought it was a weak piece of reasoning.
“You going to sit here arguing and miss your chance, or are you going to go take care of him?”
“What about the other guard?”
“He won’t interfere if you’re not there, not when it’s a catfight between us girls. Go on.” She gave me a shove. “Knock him out and come back quick.”
I didn’t like it but I had to trust her. She knew more about this kind of gig than I did. So I made my way to the toilet.
It was the first time in all my visits that I’d been in there. I’d always held back in DEL’S, waited until I was elsewhere, no matter how full my bladder got. I’d heard tales about the toilets.
It wasn’t so bad actually. No worse than any other scummy bar’s. A couple of drunks passed-out in the urinals, being pissed on by all and sundry. Puke and shit smeared across the walls. A pimp in one of the cubicles near the back screaming at one of his rent boys, slapping him for refusing to go with a certain client.
The guard was pissing down the parting of an unconscious drunk’s hair. He was laughing softly, taking careful aim, leaning forward to watch the urine flow down the man’s face. I took out my Hi-Power, reversed the grip, walked up behind the bodyguard and quickly cold-cocked him. Slammed the handle into the back of his neck. Hit him once on his crown as he fell to join the drunk in his own pool of piss. Turned and hurried back to the bar, slipping the gun into its holster. I don’t think any of the others even noticed me.
Toni was close to Golding Mironova’s table, waiting for me, holding back so that Mironova couldn’t see her. I caught her eye. Nodded to let her know it was safe. She smiled victoriously, jaggedly, and I knew instantly that I’d made the wrong call. I cursed myself but it was too late. I’d never catch her in time.
Toni stepped up to the table. Mironova began to laugh, expecting a pay-off. She stopped laughing when Toni pulled her gun, that tiny pistol I should have stripped her of in the apartment.
Toni shot the bodyguard first. Pumped two bullets into his chest as he was fumbling for his own weapon. Screeched merrily as she killed him, then darted after Mironova, who was scrabbling away. Aimed the gun between the shrieking woman’s shoulder blades and shot. Mironova stiffe
ned. I was almost on them now. Trying to run. Cutting through the gaps which were opening up as people stepped away from the heat, so that they couldn’t be implicated.
Toni’s left arm wrapped around Mironova’s neck and she rotated her head so they were face to face. I could see the shock and pain in the dying woman’s eyes.
“This one’s for Jeb, sweetie,” I heard Toni say.
Then she kissed her foe, biting down hard on Golding Mironova’s lips, and fired three more shots into her.
I reached the table and yanked Toni clear. I knew it was too late for Mironova, so I didn’t waste any time on her. Began hustling Toni towards the door. She was laughing, Mironova’s blood and lipstick smeared across her face.
“You crazy fucking bitch!” I roared.
“Let go!” Toni yelled, producing her knife, another weapon I should have had the foresight to rid her of before letting her step outside with me. “I’m gonna scalp the whore. Laugh at my hair? I’ll teach her.”
“You’ll do nothing. When we get –”
A bullet screamed by my left ear. I threw Toni to the ground and turned, sliding out my gun. The second bodyguard was standing in the toilet doorway, firing. He must have had a far harder skull than I’d imagined to recover so swiftly. Again I cursed myself for not anticipating a potential problem and dealing with it before it could come back to bite me. Should have tied him up, not just assumed he was out of the picture.
The guard would have had us dead to rights if he wasn’t still stunned from when I hit him. I returned fire, aiming for his legs, not wanting to go down for murder if the police caught up with me later.
People in the bar were pedalling as far clear of the action as they could get. This was a little too dangerous for their tastes. Knives and axes were fine, but stray bullets could strike anywhere. Mine hit the wall and door to the left of the guard. Behind me I could hear Toni reloading. Taking her time. Actually whistling while she worked.
A bullet grazed my upper right shoulder. It stung but I knew it wasn’t serious. Still, the shock of it encouraged me to aim at the guard’s stomach. A long stretch in prison would be bad, but my own death would be worse. If it had to be me or him, I’d make the kill and deal with the consequences later.
