Johnny Wylde Read online

  His work was my work.

  But right now it was his, and I had mine.

  I turned my back to the cruel parody of the mating dance behind me, with its hidden promise of future violence and thought about a still place, deep inside me.

  ***

  “So I am told we are in the same business,” Irina said.

  Deon shrugged. “Buying, selling. Boring business.”

  Irina knocked back her vodka. “I enjoy it. There is more excitement.”

  “Excitement is dangerous in this business.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Excitement is dangerous. And exciting. Don’t you feel that way?”

  He made no attempt to hide his grin. “You’ve caught me, woman.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He waved to Thieu for another beer. “Do you feel that way?”

  “What way?”

  “That you’ve caught me.”

  “Caught you for what? I don’t understand.”

  “Just playing, maisie. You’ve caught me out about why I like this business. So many interesting people, that’s what keeps me coming back.”

  “What is this maisie?”

  He reached out and tapped her hand with one finger. “Missie. That’s what it means.”

  She trapped his hand, drew a red nail down the back of his long pale hand, studied the crease it left.

  “Claws like a big cat you’ve got there, maisie,” he said.

  She turned her eyes on him, and even through the play Deon felt something dangerous stab into him. “Have you ever gone after a big cat?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Lately?”

  “Not lately.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who could go long without…”

  “Without what?”

  “Excitement. Going after…”

  “After what?”

  “Something big.”

  He looked down at his hand, pinned between hers. “Doesn’t necessarily have to be big.”

  “Could be great. That is the same as big, in English, no?”

  Deon laughed. “Great is good.”

  “Are you alone in this life?”

  “Only when I want to be.”

  “I mean, do you work alone? In your work? What about the rest of your life? Do you have a woman as well?”

  “You ask a lot of questions for someone I’ve just met.”

  “Like you say,” she said. “There are so many interesting people in this line of work.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “So how did this happen?” Irina demanded. She stalked back and forth in the office they kept at the warehouse, a Sobranie smoking between her fingers. Sergey sat behind the desk, drumming his fingers on the worn top, while Vladimir stood at a semblance of parade rest.

  Vladimir’s face was a picture of black and blue and the whole spectrum of bruising; his right hand was wrapped in plaster, and he supported himself on a cane.

  “He was in the club, looking for a woman,” Sergey said. “The security man beat him.”

  “Oh, and this is our security?” Irina sneered. “This is who we rely on to protect our interests? Beaten by a doorman in a strip club? This is what we paid for? A fool who cannot control his sexual appetites, who cannot handle himself in a simple bar room fight? This? This we have to tolerate? No! I will not!”

  Vladimir made as if to speak, stopped.

  “Yes,” Irina said. “Shut up. Nothing from you. Nothing!”

  “Sit down, Vladi,” Sergey said.

  Vladimir limped to the couch and lowered himself gingerly.

  “What of the South African?” Sergey said.

  Irina stopped, turned, drew on her cigarette, was silent for a moment herself.

  “He did it,” she said.

  “How do you know that?” Sergey said.

  “I saw it in his eyes. He is the only one in this city with the courage to do such a thing.”

  “That is not courage,” Sergey said, deceptively mild. “That is foolishness on par with this one.” He cut his eyes toward Vladimir.

  “Courage,” she said. “He is a man.”

  Sergey shrugged. “A dead man. You like him?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I will not enjoy killing him.”

  “Do you want to fuck him first?”

  She blew smoke at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Sergey inclined his head at Vladimir, spoke as though he wasn’t in the room. “And what of this one?”

  “Useless.”

  “And so?”

  She turned, rested one hand on her hip, shifted her weight to that side like a model on a runway. “What can you do, Vladi? Are you of any use?”

  Hatred radiated from the man on the couch.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am of use.”

  “How? You cannot fight, can you shoot anymore? You cannot move. Why should I not just kill you like a broken dog?”

  Vladimir stood. “I am a man. I will not listen to this anymore.”

  Sergey held up his hand. “What can you do? We cannot send you after the South African like this.”

  “I can do this thing. I will need helpers. The Cambodian. He is good.”

  Sergey and Irina studied their Slovenian assassin. He didn’t have the physiology of the beaten; his back was straight, and he glared at them through the ruin of bruise around his eyes. He pointed the cane at them.

  “I can do this. Give me the Cambodian.”

  Sergey nodded slowly, ignored the look Irina gave him. “Not tonight, Vladi. But I begin to believe in you again. I’ll put Ho with you. You need time to heal. Tell Ho what to do, the work up.”

  “We can’t wait!” Irina said. “Everyday the street looks to us to see what we are going to do. Every day the whispers grow. This will not wait.”

  “It will wait for another day. Our people are out asking questions; there is no doubt on the street that we are looking. This will give the South African time to relax, to wonder if we know about him.”

  Sergey dismissed Vladimir. “Go. Take Ho with you.”

  Vladimir stumped out of the room.

  Irina watched him go. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because he will go with the South African. We’ll be shut of both of them. And we will look for a new security man. Perhaps Ho. If he learns enough.”

  She drew on her Sobranie, crushed the butt out into the marble ashtray on the desk.

  “Did you fuck him?” Sergey said.

  She stared at him. “No. But I thought about it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Three a.m.

  I sat with Deon in the dim light of Moby’s, alone over drinks. Beer for him, as always. Tonight I was ready for the melancholy of a Bushmills, straight, slow for sipping. I love the Irish whiskies; I like to imagine that all the melancholy and the poetry of the Irish is blended together in the slow fire of the drink. I like Bushmills for that, the green label single malt, hard to find in the States, except at the premium liquor storesor airport duty free shops.

  “I thought you were going to leave with her,” I said.

  Deon grinned, a skeletal bareing of his lips. “Thought I was too, oke. But that’s the fun of the game -- nothing is certain.”

  I inhaled the rich bouquet of the Bushmills, sipped.

  “She knows, doesn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Deon said.

  “When do you think they’ll come?”

  “Soon. They won’t let it hang for long. Can’t afford to let that happen, can they, oke?”

  “So now we’re going to war with the Komarovs over two SAWs?”

  Deon shrugged. “Sometimes things need to be shaken up, oke.”

  “We can’t do this alone.”

  “We’re never alone, oke. My mates I got the SAWs for, a little quid pro quo might be in order.”

  “You wanted this all along.”

  “Thought of it. Wasn’t certain.”

  I studied him over my drink, the de
ep blue of his eyes. So many blue eyes I’d looked into recently -- his, Irina Komarov’s, Lizzy…

  “I believe you,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “For your life, or for believing you?”

  He nodded, no smile. He knew what I meant. “For both, oke. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  We locked eyes for a moment.

  Then I laughed.

  “Well, as the blind girl said, life is either a great adventure or it is nothing.”

  “Blind girl?”

  “Hellen Keller.”

  Deon shook his head. “You are a fount of useless information, my brother.”

  “Hardly. Better get on the phone.”

  “Yes,” he said. He took out his cell phone, glanced at the time, entered numbers.

  I went to the bar, pulled out the handset of the land line, dialed Lizzy’s number from memory. It only rang twice before she answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “I want to see you tonight,” I said.

  There was a long pause. She had been awake, I knew. She rarely slept before three or four in the morning, then late into the day. A creature of the night, of the floating world, just like me.

  “I’ll come to you,” she said. “I’ll be there.”

  ***

  I’ve always loved the night.

  The dark of the night, especially now, that magical time at three or four in the morning, when you can feel everyone else sleeping, feel the pauses between their breaths, when you can walk alone down a dark street and look up at the windows, see the occasional light, wonder who was doing what in there…

  I’ve always loved the night.

  The stillness of this time.

  After I came back from Afghanistan, I had a hard time sleeping. Fitful, I tossed and turned. And every night, at 3 a.m., I sat up in my bed, wondered where I was.

  Drinking helped me sleep, or so I thought. It just disrupted my sleep patterns more. After a while, a regimen of exercise and regular dosages of melatonin helped me get back on track. But working in the bar was the best thing for me. I didn’t need the money; I had a small medical retirement annuity, and more money than anyone dreamed of stashed away.

  But a man needs something to do, and since I was up already, and liked to drink there, Moby’s was the perfect spot.

  The small parking lot behind my building was full, as it usually was when I came home. Sometimes I’d take a cab, other nights, restless, I’d walk for an hour to stretch out the kinks and get myself home. Tonight, I parked on the street, got out, looked up at the sky. The city lights washed out most of the stars; I could drive out of the city and up into the low hills that ringed it and see the full array of stars, but tonight I just held the thought of it, knew that beyond the pale smear on the face of darkness were all the stars I’d ever want or need.

  There was a spot a half block away. Lizzy’s car was two spaces ahead of me, a gleaming midnight blue Mercedes Benz. Her vanity plate read DHARMA. I smiled at that, turned and walked up to my building. I paused outside my door for a moment, entered.

  There’s something I do, whenever I enter a room, something a friend showed me long ago. Just for a moment, at least in the beginning, pause long enough to feel the ambience of a room as you walk from one to the next. As you train yourself, you’ll become sensitive enough to notice the difference in how one room feels from the next…that sense of ambience is one of the foundation blocks of the awareness that keeps the professional alive.

  I felt her in the apartment. Before I saw her. Sitting in my recliner, dressed in black lounge pajamas, sheer silk, long legs curled beneath her, feet bare, a book in her lap.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  She brushed her long hair back, stroked her fingers through it. “Rumi.”

  I came to her, sat cross legged on the floor beside the chair. “Read me some.”

  She fixed her enigmatic blue stare on me, no smile. Looked at the page she was on, flipped forward through the pages with dexterous fingers.

  “This, I think,” she said.

  You are the king’s son.

  Why do you close yourself up?

  Become a lover.

  Don’t aspire to be a general

  Or a minister of state.

  One is a boredom for you,

  The other a disgrace.

  You’ve been a picture on a bathhouse wall

  Long enough. No one recognizes you here, do they?

  God’s lion disguised as a human being!

  I saw that and put down the book

  I was studying, Hariri’s Maqamat.

  There is no early and late for us.

  The only way to measure a lover

  Is by the grandeur of the beloved.

  Judge a moth by the beauty of it’s candle.

  I looked up at her. Behind the glory of her hair, behind the chair, the window behind her framed in black, the promise of stars in the night sky. She looked down at me, and in the light and the shadows, I saw the faint hint of lines beside her eyes and, for a moment, got a glimpse of the woman she would be as she aged, a woman whose beauty would only deepen as the years passed by.

  “Why are you here, Lizzy?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because I don’t understand.”

  “It’s not necessary. Is it?”

  I thought about that for a moment, closed my eyes. I smelt her, a clean warm smell, just a hint of fragrance, a lavender bath soap perhaps, nothing else.

  Just a clean smell.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  I stood, took her hand. She laid her book down on the chair and followed me into my bedroom. She had already turned down the comforter, fluffed the pillows. I turned to her, and looked deep into her. She tilted her head to me, touched my lips with hers. I darted my tongue to taste her, closed my eyes, drank in the warm scent of her, felt the brush of her hair on my face. We stood there for a moment, mouths together. She pulled away, put both hands on my face, drew the outline of my bones. Kept my hands in hers, turned and pressed her back against me, put my hands to her breasts, full and warm and alive. Guided my fingers, shaking now, to the oversized buttons, opening the top, guiding my hands to the hot skin beneath, up to cup her breasts again, stray over her erect nipples. Slip the top down, and I touched my tongue to the hollow between her shoulder blades, to the deep ridge left by the muscles of her back, the hollow of her spine. Was rewarded with a rich wash of goose pimples rising across her back, a tremble of her own. Drew my fingers slowly across the flat of her belly, felt her intake of air. Hooked my fingers in the waistband of her bottoms, slid them down and she stepped out of them with artistry and grace, no awkward fumbling, naked underneath those as well.

  Then my turn, her expert fingers working my shirt over my head, placing me back on the bed, kneeling before me to remove my shoes, take down my pants, me throbbing and erect, and she pushed me gently back onto the bed, swung one leg over me, not in her yet, she wanted to look at me deeply in the eyes, then reached down with one hand and eased me into her, hot and wet and tight, and then she leaned forward, her hands resting on my pectorals, the nails just a hint of pain as she dug in and slid herself up and down, her inner muscles a symphony on my cock, up and down, and her hair slid forward like a curtain around both of our faces, and it was like that for awhile, and just as we came she said, “I’ve always loved you, Jimmy…”

  ***

  After, I let her sleep.

  She liked to wake in my bed, and I liked to watch her wake. I liked the way her eyes opened, the tousled hair, how she blinked awake and let sleep slip away from her.

  I eased out from under her arm, stood naked beside the bed, went into the bathroom. Then I put on my shorts and sat and watched her sleep till the sun rose outside.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Nina liked strip clubs. Good ones, anyway. She liked to look at beautiful women, and as a woman, she enjoyed watching the exercise of femin
ine power. She stalked across the floor of The Trojan Horse and enjoyed the discomfort she radiated like a bow wave from a speed boat across the men seated on the runway and the tables set all across the floor. She liked how they snuck a look at her ass when she went by, and how the security men snapped to attention as she made her way to the big Chinese who was so obviously in charge.

  “Good evening, officer,” the Chinese said.

  “What’s your name, big man?” Nina said.

  “I am Kai.”

  “I am Sergeant Capushek.”

  “Can I help, Sergeant? I can find manager…”

  “No manager. I want to talk to you.”

  “Is there problem?”

  “Depends on you.”

  He shifted his weight a little, but Nina didn’t flinch. She saw that he liked that.

  “How about you buy me a drink and we have a nice little chat?” Nina said.

  The big man relaxed. “Please, sit over here.”

  He ushered her to a table just off the runway, where a young Asian girl with overdone breasts jiggled back and forth to some Euro-pop trance tune. A waitress, topless in black spray on shorts, hurried over.

  “Cuervo, double shot, lime and salt, please,” Nina said.

  “Got it,” the waitress, whose name tag on her shorts said Patty. “Kai?”

  “Dr. Pepper, lots of ice.”

  “Right away.”

  Nina said, “Dr. Pepper?”

  “Very good drink. I like it very much.”

  Nina grinned and nodded. “Pretty good gig you got here, Kai. Get to run with the ladies, listen to the tunes…every once in a while throw an asshole out…not bad, huh?”

  Kai shrugged, carefully noncommittal.

  “You know what I do, Kai?” Nina said. Patty brought the drinks, Nina nodded thanks. “How much do I owe you?”

  Patty looked at Kai, who shook his head no.

  “On the house,” Patty said.