Crime Always Pays (37 page)

          'This much is true,' Terry said.

          'Okay,' Rossi conceded. 'But Karen, when I was inside, she stole my sixty grand stash, used it to keep the wolf in caviar and silk fuckin pillows.'

          'Fair point,' Terry said.

          Mel put her hand up. 'There's one thing I'm not getting,' she said.

          'You're not getting Johnny's rod,' Rossi said, 'still sitting there not going anywhere. That's what you're not getting 
me
.'

          'This inheritance Madge is talking about,' Mel said. 'She's offering you three-quarters of a million, but you're still scuffling around after Johnny and Karen?'

          Rossi considered that. 'It turns out I'm Madge's son, like she says, which I very much fuckin doubt, then I still gotta do time to get it, mainly because Sleeps is mooning around after you, you don't give a fuck about the guy.' He sipped his White Russian, swirled the ice cubes. 'Johnny and Karen, though, they're here. Karen with a bag of cash where I'm due sixty gees, Johnny the double-crossing fuck just waiting out there for me to fork his eyes out I don't get forty grand toot sweet. You see what I'm saying.'

          'Pragmatic, yeah,' Terry said.  

'Then,' Rossi said, 'I dunno, maybe I put a round or two in the fucker's knees, from his own hot rod. For justice, like.' He said, 'Mel? Chop-chop, girl. If I know Ray, he ain't gonna stay pinned down forever.'

Doyle

Doyle tried the rent-a-car down on Ormos first, Jacob's, the place closed and dark, open nine to nine. So they had to take the bus up to the Chora, Johnny bitching about how he hadn't taken the bus, for Chrissakes, since the last time he bunked off school. Doyle reassuring him it was incognito, no one expecting to see Johnny Priest on any buses.

          Then, they find a place open in the middle of the Chora, Trohokinisi, the guy has all these forms to fill in, in triplicate, a spotty Irish kid working the counter on his own, nervous, not wanting to screw up and checking every last detail. 

          Doyle, finally, tucking the receipt into her back pocket, taking the keys, the free map, said, 'One last thing. Where's a nice place, somewhere romantic?'

          The guy scratched his acne thinking. 'I dunno, Paris?'

          'I mean on the island.' She jerked a thumb at Johnny, slumped down in the front of  the four-wheel drive jeep she'd picked out on the way in. Johnny expecting, this being his compromise, Doyle to swing by the Blue Orange, Johnny touching base to see if Roger had heard from Niko. 'We're taking a few days out, not looking to be disturbed. Where's our best bet?'

          The kid shrugged. 'Manganari, I guess. Down south, right at the end of the island. There's a village but it's quiet, just a few bars and restaurants. A nice beach.'

          'How long'll take to get down there?'

          'Depends how fast you drive,' the kid said.

          'Say I'm driving normal.'

          'A couple of hours, maybe. You don't know the road, it's dark, maybe three.'

          'Thanks a lot,' Doyle said. 'You've been a huge help.'

          'All part of the service,' the kid said.

          Doyle hauled herself up into the jeep and said, 'Change of plan, Johnny.'

          'Oh, you think?'

          Doyle got the keys in the ignition, started up the jeep. 'We're skipping the Blue Orange. I got a feeling, call it a sixth sense, we should avoid it 'til we hear from Niko.'

          'This sixth sense you got?' Johnny said. 'I'm thinking it's maybe on the fritz it hasn't picked up the guy in the back with the gun.'

          Doyle turned. Rossi sat up showing an automatic and said, 'Last time, I was aiming to miss. This close I couldn't miss if I tried.'

          'That's not strictly true,' Doyle said.

Rossi conceded the point. He said, 'Tell you what, though. You guarantee we got a truce until we get Ray sorted, I'll point the rod at the backstabbing fuck here, everyone's a winner.'

'Get 
Ray
 sorted?'

'Sure. Karen has him pinned down.'

'Karen?'

'Up north on some beach.' Rossi grinned. 'Man, that Karen. She's a lively one.'

'How come she has him pinned down?'

''Cos Ray hooked up with you.'

'Who told you this?'

'The fuck d'you think? Ray.'

'When?'

'Just now, he rang to say --'

'He 
rang
?'

'Yeah. Said he needed back-up, someone to watch the road into the village, it's the only way in-and-out you're coming from up north. Anyone other'n Sleeps or Ray shows up, I'm following 'em, keeping sketch.'

'He rang 
you
?' Doyle said.

Karen

'Ya needle-dicked bastard!' Karen was usually better at the insults, but this time, her nose a dull, grinding ache, it was too personal to get aesthetic about it. 'Ya cock-sucking monkey-turd motherfucker!'

A good half-hour, maybe more, gone by, and no sign of movement from the shack. Karen wondering if there wasn't some kind of smuggler's trapdoor and tunnel in there. 'Ya think it's cool to beat up on a woman she's not ready for you? Well, I'm good and ready 
now
, ya pussy-dodging fuck. Come on out and we'll 
do
 this!'

          A cicada chirred in the silence. The sea swuh-swishing on shale.

          'Pyle?' she called. 'You see anything?'

          'Jesus Christ,' he hissed back, 'we said no names.'

          'Yeah, well,' she said, 'you want to think about doing something useful? Like maybe circling out around onto the beach, see what you can see?'

          'Are you insane?'

          If I'm not, Karen thought, it'll do until the real deal kicks in. She levelled the .32 at the roof of the shack, zinged one off. Waited until the echoes died away, then bawled, 'I'm counting to three, ass-face. You're not out by then, I'm coming in shooting.'

          No answer. Karen took a deep breath and bawled, 'One!'

Ray

The moonlight gave the landscape a platinum sheen pitted with black hollows. The only sounds rustles and chirrups, the faint hiss of sand and breeze, and Karen like a docker with Tourette's.

          '
One!
'

          Sleeps, still ducked down, looking a little shaken even if the round had gone through the thatched roof a good three feet over his head, regarded Ray with some interest. 'You're a hitter?' he said.

          'That's a bad case of mistaken identity,' Ray said. 'She's talking about you or him. And you're saying you never saw her before.'

          They both looked at Niko. Ray said, 'Pyle says Karen got her nose busted last night. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'

          Niko, gagged, just stared.

          '
Two!
'

          'Whoa!' Ray called. 'Karen? It's me. We're coming out, okay? So no guns.' He said to Niko, 'Man, you better not be the guy she's looking for. It's way too nice a night for digging graves.'

Rossi

'It's 
past
,' Johnny said.

          'What's that?' Rossi said.

          Johnny raised his head from the rear seat. 'That song you're singing. "Will the love I gave her in the past gonna be enough to last, if tomorrow never comes?" It's not in the 
ass
, it's in the 
past
.'

          'Seriously?'

          'Lie back down,' Doyle told Johnny. 'See,' she said to Rossi, 'if Ray hadn't gone up there in the first place, Karen wouldn't have him pinned down anywhere.'

          The cop, Christ, still kvetching about Ray. Half-an-hour or more now, the jeep parked up beyond the village, Rossi and the cop making out like bandits anyone wandered by, getting in a sweaty clinch not to look bogey just sitting out there.

          'What you have to understand about Karen,' Rossi said, 'is the girl's got spirit. I mean, she lives it real, y'know? Me and her, we first got it together, Christ, it was like Bowie and Keechie all over again.'

          'Until she ripped you off.'

          'You think I'm pissed at her for ripping me off?' Rossi shrugged. 'I was inside, the girl had to live. I mean, it wasn't easy for her, y'know? I'm on my third jolt, she's got the wolf to look out for … The issue,' he said, 'where it became an ethical matter, is when I get back out and she's not stumping up what I'm owed, the stash that'll get me back in the game. That's where me and Karen fell out. You see what I'm saying.'

          'You know,' Doyle said thoughtfully, 'there was this time, when we were heading up to the lake to meet you that time, the hand-off?' Rossi nodded. 'I told Karen you were on suspicion of rape,' she said.

          '
Rape
?'

          'That girl you snatched, Marsha, to get Karen's number? She made allegations.'

          'The fuckin bitch.'

          'Except Karen, she was in fast. Said you were a prick, sure, she'd be the first to say it. But no way on any rape.'

          'See, that's Karen. Straight up all the way. Although,' he said, 'not recently with me.'

          'I could say the same,' Doyle said, 'about Ray. Taking off for this meet, he can't even do me the courtesy of a call.'

          'You'd a freaked,' Rossi said, 'Ray even hinted he was going off to get Karen back.'

          Doyle mulled that one over. 'Sounds to me,' she said, 'like me and you, we'd be the most to benefit if Karen went away.'

          'Went away how?' Rossi said.

          'Just, y'know, went away.'

          'You're not talking about her doing time?'

          'I'm on my holidays, Rossi.'

          'And, you're saying, suspended.'

          'That too.'

          'I get my stash back,' Rossi said, 'the sixty gees, Karen can go anywhere she wants. I'll even buy her the fuckin ticket.'

          'What about Anna?'

          'The wolf's different. The wolf can't gimme my ear back.'

          'You think Karen'll stand for that?'

          'No disrespect, Doyle, you're stand-up for a cop. But that's between me and Karen.'

          'It's just,' Doyle said, 'I'm wondering.'

          'Wondering what?'

          'Ray asked you sit out here, right? Keep sketch, you're calling it, to see if maybe Johnny's guy comes through on his own.'

          'Perxactly.'

          'What's in that for you?'

          'Johnny. It was a favour Ray called, how I'd get --'

          Doyle glanced meaningfully into the rear of the jeep.

          'Oh shit,' Rossi said, 'yeah.'

          'What?' Johnny said, his voice coming muffled. 'What 
now
?'

Ray

'I tell you something, people,' Pyle said, 'y'all got a commendable appetite for hardware. You come out here to Ios, paradise in the sun, sleepy little island, and twenty-four hours later it's like Tarantino remade Bull Run. How d'you do it, huh?'

          No one answered, the four of them standing in a triangle on the beach, Pyle and Karen split wide, Ray keeping Niko close. Ray watching Karen, the girl dead-eyed, a busted nose and swollen bruise over her right eye, the crooked jaw set. Eyes on Niko.

          Pyle said, 'How come, you don't mind me asking, you came down here?'

          'We took a wrong turn,' Ray said, 'heading for the castle.'

          Pyle pretended to shade his eyes against the moonlight craning his neck up the coast. 'That castle way up yonder? You came down here to get up there?'

          'We had the map upside down,' Ray said. Pyle talking too much, Ray with a gun in his hand preferring quiet to any possibility of insult or misunderstanding. Pyle now eyeing Niko up and down. He said, 'So where's Johnny?'