Crime Always Pays (25 page)

          
Write what you know
, they said. Every time, Mel shelling out good money to hear the same damn thing fifty different ways – 
write what you know
. Mel was always tempted to raise a hand, ask how that worked for ghost stories, or you wanted to write a movie about spacemen, aliens. What Melody mostly knew was how little she knew.

Until, okay, now.

          The plan, if Ray was to catch her up, ask about the money, was to say she'd been keeping it safe for him, no sense in leaving all that cash lying around, a temptation.

          As for Rossi and Sleeps, they tracked her down wanting to know where Johnny Priest's coke was at, Melody figured the same ploy would work there too.

Melody, in life as in writing, believed in the genius of simplicity.

Rossi

'So I says, "Ray, we can do a deal here."'

          'How'd that go down?'

          '
I 
went down,' Rossi said. 'We're in parlay, yeah? But he whacks me with the Uzi anyway. Ow, Jesus. Go easy.'

          This last to the nurse sewing the fresh wound. Which was at least a step up, Rossi conceded, from getting stitched by a vet.

'He had a go during a sit-down?' Sleeps said.

          'This is what we're dealing with, Sleeps. A moral degenerate. Next thing I'm waking up in the box.' Rossi skipping how he'd thought he'd been buried alive, sliding past the bit where he'd had himself a quiet weep.

          Rossi, in a bad week to start with, was having a long day. Shot at, knocked unconscious, dumped in an early grave, then jumping ship on Santorini, ferrying back the way they came, a couple of hours each way. Rossi traumatised by his experience and anxious to share. Except Sleeps was catatonic the whole time, only perking up when they made Ios.

          'It gets worse,' Sleeps said. 'He's swiped Mel too.'

          'Fuck 
Mel
. Ow.'

          'Please to sit still,' the nurse said.

          'First off, I want that Uzi back,' Rossi said. 'You still have the mag, right?'

          'You're the one had it. You must've left it in the van.'

          'Crap.'

          'Seriously, Rossi, I'm worried about Mel.'

          'I give the girl six months, she'll be running the white slave trade out of Hong Kong.'

          'Last I saw her,' Sleeps said morosely, 'she was with someone who'd shoot down on an unarmed man. The kind of degenerate, you called him, who'd whack someone during parlay.'

          'Except,' Rossi said, 'she's more likely the one who swiped Ray. Jesus! 
Ow
!'

          The nurse staring at him, the needle poised. 'Your friend is Ray?' she said.

Karen

Karen reckoned the best thing, in case Pyle took any notions when he got back, the guy with a couple of beers on, was to be gone at the time. Pyle being smart enough, she was hoping, or experienced enough, to take the hint.

So she left Anna snoozing off her beer buzz and grabbed a sweater, the night turning chilly. Strolled out into the slivery-grey world beyond the walls, on down towards the shore along a tyre-marked track that wound through a grove of desiccated trees, Karen giving a wide berth to the little blue boxes Pyle'd told her were beehives. Ios honey, he said, being famous for its hint of oregano. Karen only realising then what it was she'd been smelling all day. 

          She strolled on, cicadas zizz-zizzing, lizards rustling in the dry scrub. A tinkle-tankle of goat-bells. Then heard a self-satisfied rumble and saw a faint plume of dust way off to her left, ghostly in the moonlight. Someone coming down off the escarpment, arriving late to the commune, a chainsaw juggler, maybe a seaweed sculptor. Pyle, okay, seemed to know what he was doing, talked a good game. But the rest were artists of the bullshit variety. One guy, eating vegetarian barbecue for Chrissakes, had told her with a straight face he was writing a ballet for trees.

She picked her way down a steep ravine, careful about slipping on the loose shale, maybe twisting an ankle, and got herself perched on a still-warm boulder overlooking a sheltered bay, a faint breeze funneling up the narrow channel to cool her face, the night plenty warm once you were moving. She lit a cigarette but mainly she inhaled the night, the quiet, the impression of comforting distance that went with looking out across a placid black sea. The cicadas, the whish-shushing waves, somehow part of the silence. The night damn near perfect except for the bee that'd tracked Karen all the way to the shore and was whining now somewhere up to her right, invisible in the dark.

          Except then a boat rounded the near headland, its outboard motor buzzing, and angled down the channel.

Karen slid backwards off the boulder as a spotlight blazed, turning the cove bright as day. 

Madge

'"Deliver Israel, O God, from all his tribulations,"' Madge said. 'It's from the Psalms. Psalms 24.'

          'You wanted to call the kid Israel?'

          Madge nodded. 'The nuns said to take something from the Bible. So, I'm handing him up, I figure the least I can do is give him a name that means something. Like a prayer, a blessing he'd carry all his life.'

          'Nice thought,' Terry said. 'But for an Irish kid? You don't think you were setting him up for, y'know, all sorts of Christ-killer grief?'

          'Don't sweat it,' Madge said. 'Frank got involved, Frank the fucking wannabe intellectual, the opera freak. A 
big
 fan of Rossini. Mainly,' she added, tapping ash, 'because of the Lone Ranger.'

          'So you're saying neither of you was particularly worried about how the kid might fare in the playground.'

          'I was seventeen, Terry, just after having a baby. I mean, this was about half-an-hour after being ripped open. Just trying to do the right thing.'

          'And still trying now,' Terry said, 'even though the guy, you're saying, reckons you're wrong.'

          Madge had seen Rossi on Santorini, Madge and Terry disembarked from the cruise ship and waiting to board the next ferry out, perched on their luggage while Terry sorted the tickets. Not recognising him at first, just idly scanning the faces of the milling crowd, then noticing the blood, some guy seriously pissed about something, waving his arms around, a big guy – Sleeps, who'd been so good to Madge, gave her his jacket for a pillow the time she fainted up at the lake – Sleeps nodding patiently while Rossi vented.

          Fate, she reckoned. Surprising herself at how quietly she accepted it, all her effort taken up with suppressing the urge to go to him, take a cool cloth to his bloody face.

          'He's in denial,' she said, Terry leaning back to order another couple of beers from the barman, Mr Baywatch. Madge's gaze riveted to the entrance of the health centre, Rossi'd been in there over an hour now. 'Like, he's been told all his life his mother was some slapper worked the canal, his father a pizza guy over from Sicily. This is what he's being told in the home. But he's the right age, Terry. The right 
name
.'

          'It's perfect,' Terry agreed. 'So perfect he steps in and snatches you right out from under Ray's nose. This Rossi being the reason,' he added, 'everything fucked up. Why you're right now a fugitive from justice.'

          Madge thought about that. 'Maybe,' she said, the barman placing a tray with two beers, frosted glasses, on the table, 'if I hadn't dumped him all those years ago, he wouldn't have been just out of prison and so desperate for money he'd cut in on Ray and Karen. How's that sound?'

          'Like you're still a fugitive from justice,' Terry said, sucking some froth off his upper lip, 'only this time it's natural justice.' He considered. 'Except sounding, to me, like you're thinking of turning the tables, going off to hunt down natural justice. Make it all well with Rossi again.'

          'You could just as easily have said that,' Madge observed, 'without sneering.'

          'All I'm saying is, you've got enough problems without --'

          'If Rossi's here,' Madge said, 'then it's Karen he's after. The money she owes him.'

          'And you're going to help him,' Terry said, 'nail Karen. This guy who shot Ray.'

          'Ray seems to me like a guy who can see the bigger picture.'

          'Ray thinks twice,' Terry admitted, 'for sure. It's one of his strong points. But asking him to go splits with a guy nearly killed him? That's a big ask.'

          'Who said anything,' Madge said, peering into the gathering gloom at the ESY, 'about asking?'

Ray

Ray'd never ridden any bikes with a busted arm before and wouldn't be in any hurry to try it again, especially not at night along some dirt-track felt like he was cruising railway sleepers. Ray wondering if he should've listened to the doc, stayed between the sheets. And then, just as the worst was over, Ray coming down off the escarpment and crossing the plain towards the lights, some guy ambles out of this tumbledown cottage and plants himself in the middle of the track. Ray, he wasn't doing four miles a fortnight on account of the arm, would've run him down.

The guy motioned for Ray to switch off. Ray left the engine idling. '
Yassou
,' he said.

          '
Yassou
, friend.' The guy heavy, face like a mushroom pizza, these shoulders he'd swiped off some baby bear. Ray waited. The guy scratched his stubble, sweat-stains showing in the armpits of the rumpled shirt. 'Is there a problem?' Ray said.

          'No problem.' Sounding harsh, maybe Nordic. 'You just took the wrong turn.'

          'That's the commune down there, right? Where the hippies hang out.'

          'That's private property.' No menace. If anything, the guy sounded bored.

          'Okay. But I'm looking for a friend.'

          'Aren't we all?'

          'Sure. But --'

          The guy jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'People come out here for peace and quiet. That's what they pay for.'

          'What if I went down on tippy-toe?'

          'What if you turned around, went back the way you came?'

          'That way I wouldn't get to see my friend.'

          'If you tell me where you're staying, I'll pass on a message.'

          'I haven't got a place to stay yet.'

          The guy shrugged.

'How about,' Ray said, 'you ring down ahead, see if she wants to talk.'

          'No visitors, friend.'

          'How about Pyle? He take calls?'

          'Pyle?'

          'Pyle, yeah, with the ponytail.'

          'Why'd you want to talk to him?'

          'Ask him after we're done. He wants you to know, he'll tell you.'

          The guy thought it over. Then he reached in over the handlebars and turned the key, tugged it out and went inside. He came out with a phone, dialling up. Waited a moment or two, listening, then handed the phone to Ray.

          'Pyle?'

          'Who's this?'

          'Ray.'

          'Ray?' A beat, then, 'Fuck're you doing out of bed, man? You trying to kill yourself?'

          'Just looking for Karen.'

          'Same thing, right?' Pyle chuckling. 'Listen,' he said, 'she's not here right now, she must've gone for a walk. You want, I'll get her to buzz you when she gets back.'

          'Appreciate it. Only I don't have a phone.'

          'Where're you staying? She can call there.'

          'I'm not staying anywhere yet. I couldn't just drop by, wait 'til she gets back?'

          'No can do, buddy. Like George says, rules is rules. You'll get me kicked out. Court-martialled and shit.'

          Ray grinned. 'She told you that, huh? She mention I was hung like a Shire horse?'

          'A Percheron's what she said. Tell you what, man – I'm busy here for another hour, then I'll come meet you, we'll grab a beer. You were really in the Rangers?'

          'For a while, yeah.'

          'Cool. And look, if Karen's back by then, I'll bring her along. How's that?'