Crime Always Pays (24 page)

Ray

'He's coming straight at me,' Ray said. 'Like, what am I meant to do, jump overboard? This being a scumbag,' he added, 'who's already shot me, three days ago.' He took a drag off his smoke. 'Fuck that, he got warned.'

          'You sure you should be out of bed? That sun's pretty fierce.'

          Ray dragged his sun lounger into the shade under the umbrella. 'You want the truth?' he said. 'I never shot down on anyone before. Never wanted to, never did.' Ray trying to work out if it was the drugs had him high or the adrenaline rush, seeping through now the shock had dissipated, Ray buzzing after his long sleep. He'd waited until the doctor clocked off and then went looking for his clothes, his valuables, the nurse reluctant to let him go but having no real choice in the matter, Ray demanding to see some form he could sign to absolve the clinic from responsibility. 'Anyway,' he said, 'I squeezed one off.'

          'Except at this stage, you're saying, you're not sure if there's one up the spout.'

          'You ever handled an Uzi?'

          'I work the desk,' Sparks said. 'Me and guns, even allowing for the whole phallic thing, we just don't mix.'

          Ray nodded. 'The joy with your Uzi,' he said, 'is it's so safe you can run around with one in the hole. Drop it, hit the fucker with a hammer, it still won't go off. So I'm presuming, without checking, there's a round ready to go.'

          'You could've killed him.'

          'Not unless he grew three feet in a split-second, and he was already ducking in low.'

          'And no one heard the shot?'

Ray shrugged. 'I'd say loads of people heard it. Whether they knew it was a gunshot, though … Most people, they hear a gun go off, they're hoping it's not what they think it is, y'know? Looking around for a back-firing van.' He scratched his nose. 'Anyway, I clonked him here,' Ray said, pointing above his ear, 'with the Uzi.'

          Sparks grimaced. 'This the same ear the wolf ripped off?'

          'I wasn't aiming for it. I just swung, one-handed, it was dumb luck I got him there. And I don't even know if he felt it, he went down that fast.'

          'Don't tell me you chucked him overboard,' Sparks said. 'I'd have to testify under oath.'

          'The Uzi went overboard. Rossi I dragged across to the bench.' Ray shook his head, remembering. 'Ever try to drag an unconscious man?'

          'How else would I get 'em into my love-nest?' Sparks winked. 'So what then?'

          'I stuck him in this box where they keep the life-savers.'

'And no one said boo.'

'There was no one around, we were early getting on the ferry.'

          'Leaving him comfortable in there,' Sparks said, 'on top of all the life-savers.'

          'I thought he'd enjoy the irony.'

          'I know someone who'll get a bang out of it. Mind if I ring her again?'

'Work away. But if she's sleeping, she's sleeping.'

          Sparks rang Doyle. Ray lit a fresh smoke and tried to decide, again, who was most likely to have swiped the thirty grand and his passport, Karen or Melody. When Sparks was finished leaving her message, he nodded across the road. 'And you're saying, the guys in the scooter rental gave Doyle nothing.'

          'She was fed up, hungover. Only asked the once, where's the girl staying rented the blue Kawasaki, Karen King. The guy got pissy, he couldn't speak English, so she just walked out again.'

          Ray smoked on. 'How d'you think she is?' he said.

          Sparks shrugged. 'She looked happy enough to me. That guy she's with, he's cute for an older guy.'

          'I mean Doyle. How's she making out?'

'Doyle?' Sparks shaded her eyes looking across. 'I don't know. She says she's tired but it's more than that.'

'Like how?'

'She's just not herself. Maybe, she was saying yesterday, it was the fright she got, being shot at. You were there when it happened, right?'

'Already shot.' Ray crushed his smoke in the sand. 'Listen, I'm grabbing a beer. Want another one of those?'

          'Sure. Only make it a strawberry one this time. Banana's a fattening fruit.'

          'You could do,' Ray said, getting up, 'with putting on a few pounds. There's nothing less sexy than too skinny.' He stepped over the low wall, crossed the road and went into the roadside bar, Baywatch, ordered an Amstel, a strawberry daiquiri. Then, while the guy went out back hunting fresh strawberries, Ray rolled down his sleeves and strolled next door to the scooter rental, slipping a credit card, the gold one, out of his wallet.

          '
Yassou
,' he said. '
Kalimera
.'

          '
Kalispera
,' the middle-aged guy behind the counter said, smiling. 'How can I help for you?'

          'Looking to rent a bike, something decent. For a week.'

          'You have a driver license?'

          'Sure.' Ray got out his wallet, laid the license beside the credit card. 'I was here last year,' he said, 'you won't remember, but you rented me a sweet blue Kawasaki. Any chance it's still around?'

          'Ah, but no.' The guy copying out Ray's details, liver spots like a join-the-dots game on the crown of his bald head. 'This is not possible. This bike, she is rented.'

          'That's a shame,' Ray said. 'The guy rent it for long?'

          'A woman. She rent for one week also.'

          'Maybe I'll see her around,' Ray said. 'Persuade her to swap.'

          'Perhaps.' The guy bobbing his head. 'But where she stays, is not a very good place to see her.'

          'Oh yeah? She's staying up in the village?'

          The ice had melted in the daiquiri by the time Ray got back to the beach. Sparks said, 'Any joy with the rental guy?'

          'Nope. Unhelpful bastards, aren't they?'

          'Who's that, the Greeks or just men in general?'

          'Miaow,' Ray said.

Karen

Up close the ranch-style building was more in the way of an old bus garage converted into a dormitory, the whitewash dulled pinkish from the orange dust. Pyle led the way through the double gates into a graveled courtyard with a round dry fountain in the middle, the high walls topped by dinky little battlements that got Karen thinking, again, maybe it was just her frame of mind, of the Alamo. A red-brick barbecue over in the corner built into a recess under an olive tree. Karen liked the look of the bleached-wood picnic tables.

          The dorm was another matter. Twelve beds curtained off, not all of them taken. Pyle said Karen could rent one of the rooms built on if she wasn't cool with the set-up. So that's what Karen did, choosing a room for its balcony looking onto the courtyard, a view of the Aegean beyond the battlements, Karen seeing the sea as a vast moat, liking the notion. She'd never seen Anna as placid, and wondered if it was all the open space or just the girl hungover from too many pills.

          Or, maybe, Pyle.

He had his feet up on the balcony wall, a beer on his midriff, saying how he used to be a Marine. Did a tour, still a kid, in the Vietnam conflict, this before he came to Greece. Semper Fi, he said, my skinny white ass.

'Was this guy, Sassoon,' Pyle said, 'fought in the trenches in World War One. A poet. Anyway, he got invalided out twice but he always went back. I'll give the guy guts, he had that. But one war was plenty for me.'

          Saying how he'd seen Vietnamese melted at the side of the road. Actual human beings shrunk down to not much bigger than dogs. The sight bad enough without the smell.

A comforting rumble to his voice, Karen feeling safe for the first time in she couldn't remember how long, the commune being so remote. A guy, George, out on the road watching for strangers. She said, 'That George doesn't talk much, does he?'

          'It's better when poets don't talk out loud.'

          'He didn't look much like a poet.'

          'The best ones don't.'

Karen grooving on the scene, people wandering aimless through the courtyard, stopping off at balconies to shoot the shit, gathering around the picnic tables. Beefheart filtering out from the dorm, 
Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles
.

'Ray used to be in the Rangers,' she said. 'He said it was like the Marines.'

          'Ray of the Rangers?'

          They both got a bang out of that one. Pyle said, 'He's had training, yeah?'

          'Until he got court-martialled out.'       

'I'm guessing he's a good man in a tight spot.'

          'When he's not running off, sure.'

          Anna whining at the sound of Ray's name, raising her head to look around. Pyle chucked her under the chin.

'Pyle? No offence, but I have to ask. I mean, about the duffel.'

          Pyle shrugged. 'We have writers, painters. George the poet. One guy, he's a fire-eater. Another one's putting together a symphony of shell sounds and seagulls. Not exactly your criminal mastermind types.'

          'I know, but --'

          'First off, no one knows what's in the duffel. Second, Anna. Third, one of the commandments, it's actually a commandment, the Biblical kind. You finished with that?'

          Karen sloshed around the inch or two of beer in her bottle. 'Just about.'

          Pyle got up, went inside. Karen tapped along to a new Beefheart number and then realised it wasn't Beefheart, it was Elvis Costello, a tune Karen didn't recognise. She put her feet up on the balcony wall and tried to figure out how to play Pyle.

          Karen wondering, again, if it all mightn't be a whole lot simpler if she was older, didn't need that buzz she got from Ray, Christ, even Rossi – how they let her feel it was okay, just once in a while, to get animal, forget everything except the right here and now.

          He came back out with two bottles and a saucer, poured some of his beer for Anna and set it down in front of her. Anna sniffing, curious, then lapping at it cautiously.

          'None of them,' he said.

          'Excuse me?'

          'You asked, on the train, how many of them offered to buy their way in.' He reached across, clinked his bottle against Karen's. 'I'm saying, none of them did.'

Melody

Mel went Spartan for accommodation, low-key, no sense in drawing attention, but was still a little disappointed to realise the wardrobe in her room was, she hated to admit, just a smidge narrower than she was herself.

          She sat at the table out on the balcony overlooking the port and opened the notebook, time to recap. Except the glare of the setting sun on the blank pages reminded her of Ray, so drained he was a jaundice stain on the crisp white sheets. Mel suffering, along with the usual heartburn she got in the evening, pangs of guilt, and feeling a little crampy now from nerves.

Ray should be waking up any time now.

Mel hoped he'd get back on his feet and presume she'd hopped the next ferry out, the logical thing to do when you've ripped someone off for thirty grand, the guy flat-backed, unconscious with exhaustion. The doctor wanting to know how Ray'd busted his arm. 

'Before my time,' Melody'd said. 'I met him on the ferry, thought he looked sickly. What d'you think, is it heat-stroke?'

Telling the doc Karen and Pyle were just off the ferry too, generously offering to help haul Ray out of the port around to the ESY. Mel dropping in a reference to Blanche DuBois, the kindness of strangers.

          The doctor had nodded along, dubiously, then said Ray'd be okay once he got the other side of about two days sleep. Although, he'd be running some x-rays on the arm once Ray woke up, make sure it was healing right, wasn't part of the problem.

'Super,' Mel'd said. 'I'll drop by tomorrow, see how he's doing.'

          The doctor quizzing her about travel insurance, stuff like that.

          'No idea,' Melody'd said. 'Like I say, I just met the guy. All I know is his name's Ray and he looked poorly.' Mel arriving in the doctor's office via a visit to the restroom with Ray's hold-all , none too happy her panties were big enough to hold thirty grand in cash but thinking too she probably should be counting her blessings. She'd given the doctor the hold-all. 'You want to rummage around in there,' she'd said, 'maybe you'll come up with some details you need.'

          Then left and dragged her bags around to the port. Hailed a taxi, directing the cabbie up the hill to the village. Looking out at the pubs and clubs they passed, Melody wondered which one was Johnny Priest's, where Rossi and Sleeps were supposed to drop off the coke. Asking herself, a direct question, if she had the audacity, she ever found out which bar was Johnny's, to just walk in and ask for the ten grand she was owed. Thrilling to the idea, the daring. Actual tingles, like some dark electricity, when she pictured it – Jack, cool and roguish, an older guy, Judy with that big-girl style going on, Sophie Dahl packing heat and asking for the ten grand she was owed …