Crime Always Pays (21 page)

          Rossi, grudging it, had to admit Ray had style. Real cool, this one-armed bandit holding a cannon on Rossi but still thinking ahead, worrying about insurance details. Now using, Rossi couldn't help but notice, his busted arm to unzip the hold-all.

          'Hey,' Rossi said. 'I thought your arm was broke.'

          'Arm's busted,' Ray agreed. 'The hand's fine, though.' He pulled the strap of the hold-all over his head, placed the Uzi inside. Then opened the door and stepped out of the car. 'See y'all up on deck,' he drawled, closing the door.

          'The fuck's he going?' Rossi said, shoving his door open. Then heard it clang against the metal wall.

By the time he got Sleeps out of the driver's seat and crawled across, chased up the steep metal steps, found his way out onto the top deck, Ray was already at the rail with the hold-all  dangling from his shoulder at waist height and pointed at Rossi.

'She isn't on Crete,' Rossi said, 'is she?'

'I told you, she ran out. She could be anywhere. And that's far enough.'

Ray raising the Uzi out of the hold-all a little, so Rossi could see his finger on the trigger. Except Rossi'd taken grief all his life, about Italian tanks, how they had fifteen reverse gears, all this. And up here, in full view of the quays? Ray was shooting no one.

He kept going. 'You know I'm right, Ray. Be honest now. I'm owed.'

'Karen tells it different.'

          'Karen who ran out on you.'

'Don't do it, Rossi.'

They'd carve it on his headstone. 
Don't do it, Rossi
.

'Do what?' he said. 'All we're doing's talking, right?'

Ray backing off now. The space behind him narrowing, the decks squeezed between the rail and the big black funnel. Rossi giving away fifty, maybe sixty pounds, three or four inches in height. But Ray had that busted arm.

          'Something you should know, Rossi.'

          'What's that?' Rossi measuring the distance. Another two, three steps ...

          'This isn't Sicily.'

          'Fuck're you talking about?'

          'You're in Greece.'

          Rossi felt a rumbling beneath his feet and made up his mind, fake left, dive right. He put his hands up, palms out, said, 'We can sort this, Ray. One pro to another. We can do a deal here.'

          'What kind of deal?'

          'Fifty-fifty split. She's fucked you, she's fucked me. So we fuck her back.'

'I'm retired,' Ray said but Rossi was already lunging. This as the klaxon blared, the funnel juddering. Rossi aiming for the hold-all, the Uzi and Ray's bogey arm, the one he'd have trouble swinging up fast enough to …

          But he was still only halfway there when his sucking gut told him, shit, he'd guessed wrong. Ray the ex-Ranger quicker than Rossi would've believed, the Uzi's barrel swinging up to meet his lunge, Rossi so close the muzzle-flash blinded him even as his head exploded.  

SATURDAY

Ray

'There's fink,' Ray said. 'Fink, rat, squeal, snitch, nonce.' He thought about it. 'Finger, peach and stool. How many do you need?'

Ray with a nice buzz on, five or six highballs down the hatch, heart still pumping from dragging Rossi's dead weight one-armed. The rush easing off now, chilling into what he could only describe as mellow exhilaration. Ray, for all his time in the Rangers, he'd never shot down cold on anyone before.

          'One'll do it.' Melody sniffed. 'The one that sums up how you feel about Karen.'

          'Then definitely fink. F for Friday, I for ink.'

          'I know how to spell fink, Ray.'

          The bar quiet, only a few hardy souls still drinking this late. Or, Ray trying to focus on the mirror-clock behind the bar, this early. Most of the plush velvet seats, the semi-circular booths, taken up with prone backpackers, rucksacks piled every which way.

          'What you might find interesting,' Ray said as Mel bent to her notebook again. 'They're all verbs used to be nouns.'

          She checked her notes. 'It's possible to peach?'

Mel with the idea Ray was some kind of gangster, hard-boiled. Ray hated to disappoint the ladies. 'Nothing sweeter than a juicy peach,' he said. He sipped on his highball and leaned in along the polished counter of the bar. 'Hey, can you keep a secret?'

          'That all depends,' Mel said, edging closer. 

          'It only has to be a secret from Sleeps. Otherwise you can tell whoever you want.'

          'Even Rossi?'

          'Why would you want to tell Rossi?'

          'No reason. I'm just checking.'

          'Between you and me, Mel, everything's a secret from Rossi. That,' he warned, 'being the biggest secret of all.'

          'I won't tell anyone,' Mel said.

          'Tell 'em what?'

          'This secret I can't tell Sleeps.'

          'Oh yeah.' Ray tapped a finger against his nose, mainly to buy time, then remembered. 'Karen isn't gone to Crete,' he said.

          'No?'

'Nope.'

Melody flipped back a page or two, scratched out a line. 'So where has she gone?'

'Ah.' Ray waggled a forefinger. 'That's a different secret.'

'It's all part of the same secret, Ray.'

'Actually,' Ray said, considering, 'I haven't the faintest idea where she's gone. For all I know she's headed for Crete.' 

'But you just said --'

'I just picked an island,' Ray said. 'First one popped into my head.'

'So why Crete?'

'It's a big place. Wild in spots. You want to hide away, you and your wolf, there's plenty of room.'

'So you'd have gone to Crete,' Mel said.

'I had a wolf, yeah.'

'Did you tell Karen that?'

'About Crete?' Mel nodded. 'I don't know if I mentioned Crete specifically,' he said. 'Why?'

'Because if you did, it's the last place she'd go.'

'She knows I won't be chasing her.'

'You just broke up with her, Ray. Think she's taking your advice on anything now?'

'I'm not entirely sure,' Ray said, 'it was me broke up with her.'

'So she dumped you. Same difference.'

'Being honest, and technically speaking, I don't know if we were together long enough to break up. It was barely a week.'

Mel, the tip of her tongue poking from the corner of mouth, scribbled another note, underlined it twice. 'So what'll we do about the ten grand?' she said.

'What ten grand?'

'The ten we're owed by Rossi and Sleeps. For their passports.'

'We?'

'I'll cut you in for two. Get it back and there's two in it for you.'

'Sorry, Mel. I'm retired.'

          'Three. Three's my final offer.'

          Ray heard himself tell Mel how much he had stashed in a safety deposit box. How little he needed three grand, no offence, thanks all the same.

Mel, eyes huge, licked her lips. 'You're kidding.'

          'Don't believe the hype, Mel. Crime pays. Ask Marx.' He drained his highball. 'Anyway, I've a notion Rossi won't be following through on that deal he'd planned. I'd say your ten gees are gone.'      

Mel put her pen down and stared gloomily into her Shirley Temple, stirring it with the big pink swizzle stick. 'Not really up to speed on the whole knight in shiny armour bit, are you?' she said. 

          'You're white,' Ray said, 'you speak English, you have a credit card. There's about three billion people'd think they'd died and gone to heaven they had half your chances.'

          'So much,' Mel said, 'for chivalry.'

          Ray signaled the barman. 'Chivalry,' he said, 'is strictly from hunger.'

Sleeps

Sleeps woke to gnawing panic, already reaching for the steering wheel, shit, his worst nightmare, falling asleep at the --

          Then realised, relief flooding through, the car was parked, still deep in the guts of a ferry. He knuckled his eyes hauling himself upright, saying, 'Sorry, I must've dozed off. What were you saying?'

          Except she was gone. Leaving a note on the dashboard, '
Gone to freshen up, back soon. x Mel
.'

          Not saying, no surprise there, what time she left.

Sleeps, fiddling with the stereo, getting only static, snatches of Greek gabble, wasn't sure if he should be worried. On one hand, Rossi'd been gone for hours. On the other, Rossi'd been gone for hours. 

          Sleeps, feeling a little guilty about it, was more worried about Mel. Rossi could handle himself, mostly, but Mel was a bit more delicate. Not to look at, okay, the girl was built like a gingerbread cottage. But there was something Sleeps liked about the fragile way she thought. Ideas that went off at tangents, looped around, tied her up in knots. Sleeps, dozing off one time, tried to imagine what one of Mel's thoughts might look like as an arc and was so impressed he woke up dizzy. Or maybe he was so dizzy he woke up impressed.

The girl asking him, not long after Rossi took off after Ray, 'How come you let Rossi call the shots?'

'The guy's happier,' Sleeps'd said, 'he thinks he's the one running the show.'

'Okay, but what about you? When do you get happy?'

Sleeps had to think about that one. 'I always thought,' he said, 'I was a coward for not wanting to go to war. I mean in theory, no one's letting me in any man's army, right? But, you think about it, going off to war and shit, you're thinking, no fucking way. I used to say I was a pacifist, like it was a philosophy, not wanting someone to blow your head off. Especially as it's always some other fucker's war, some bastard sitting in an office ringing up some bastard on the other side, saying, "Hey, I got a surplus on rockets over here, want a war?"' Sleeps glanced in the rearview. 'How come you're not taking notes?'

'It's, um, all up here,' Mel said, tapping her temple.

'Anyway,' Sleeps said, 'I didn't realise, you go off to war despite the fact you're crapping it, not because you're some kind of hero. Most guys, you'll find, they're not heroes. And then, most soldiers make it back. They didn't, you'd run out of soldiers fast, one way or another.'

'Okay. But what's that have to do with Rossi ordering you around?'

'I seen a movie once,' Sleeps said, 'you had this ordinary guy, a private, and his sergeant or corporal, can't remember which but the dude gets shot, a sniper. So the ordinary guy, he radios back to base, he's told, "You're promoted, congratulations." So the guy, it's bad enough he's in the middle of a fucking war, in the jungle, he has to take charge. Making sure everyone else makes it too. I mean, most soldiers make it back, like I said. But lots don't.'

'So you're saying,' Mel said, 'it's a lack of ambition.'

'That's one way of looking at it, I guess. Plus, I go on the nod. You go back through history, look at the achievers, Alexander, Khan, Ali, Rossi – there's not many narcoleptics in there, y'know? Or, say they were even prone to the anytime siesta, no one's hailing it as any kind of unfair advantage they had over everyone else.'

'I wouldn't,' Mel murmured, 'have necessarily put Rossi and Alexander the Great in the same bracket.'

'Valentino Rossi. You never heard of him?'

'Can't say as I have.'

          'The Doc, yeah, greatest motorcycle rider in history. So good he was planning to race cars, he was bored winning on bikes. The guy's Rossi's hero, the reason he picked the name Rossi.'

          'Rossi isn't his real name?'

          'So he says.'

          'So what is it?'

          'Dunno, he never said. Anyway, the Doc, he wasn't given to forty winks whizzing through any chicanes, y'know?'

          'Isn't there any kind of treatment you can take?' Mel said. 'For the narcolepsy, I mean.'

          Which must have been the point where Sleeps dozed off. Now he wondered if he shouldn't go take a look-see upstairs. Rossi, taking off after Ray, had said to stick with the car, but Sleeps couldn't see what he was achieving by staying put. Plus his sugar levels were dropping, he hadn't eaten in five, six hours, this on top of the big black hole opening up where the lake of crizz used to be. A crash in the post, Sleeps'd been there before, a plummet like a suicidal lemming.

          Not pretty.

          He locked the car, leaving the key behind the driver's wheel in case Mel came back down, and got up on deck just as the ferry docked at some port, reversing in. Sleeps hung on the rail watching the folks beetle up onto the orange-lit dock, shivering now in his shorts and pink daisy shirt. It was only then it occurred to him that Rossi and Mel, either or both, might have already jumped ship.