Crime Always Pays (7 page)

          'What I'm 
saying
,' she said, 'is lots of people won't fly these days. But they still go on holiday.'

          Sleeps grinned. 'The ferry,' he said. 'Of course.'

          'The best part?' Melody said. 'At the port they don't really pay too much attention to passports and suchlike when you're heading out.' She squeezed past the leather couch, used her hip to bump Sleeps away from the mirror. Sleeps bumping her back, getting a grind going on. 'I mean,' she said, 'you were saying you need to get passports, right?'

'That was a private fuckin conversation,' Rossi said.

          'You losing an ear and all,' Sleeps pointed out, 'you've been a doing a lot of shouting ever since.'

Mel turned all the way around, frowning at herself in the mirror. 'Does my ass look big in this?'

          'Not if you're planning to screen a movie,' Rossi said.

          'Hey,' Sleeps said. 'No personals, okay?'

          Mel shrugged it off, went through to a side room. Came back holding a fat envelope, from which she drew a bundle of passports.

          'Holy shit,' Sleeps said. 'Are they real?'

          'Most of them, yeah.'

          'You get much call for passports in blue movies?' Rossi said.

          'These German guys we have in the movies? They're mostly not German. They want to come here, y'know, get into the EU through the back door, our guys'll bring 'em in, no problem. Except then they need to work it off before they get their passports back.'

          'By screwing in blue movies,' Rossi said, awed. 'Christ, it's a dirty job …'

          'When our guys say they'll get in through the back door,' Mel said, 'they're actually saying, y'know, the back door.'

          'What about the girls?' Sleeps said. 'They trafficked too?'

          'The girls are mostly Irish. Models, like. Only in Ireland there's enough work for about two and a half models. So they're going the other way, getting out.' Mel put the bundle of passports on the coffee table. 'Just make sure the one you pick is still in date. Don't get us screwed on some schoolboy error.'

          'Us?' Rossi said.

'A three-way split,' Mel said. 'It's that,' she added, 'or I tell you she's gone to Timbukthree.'

          Rossi, helpless, looked over at Sleeps. Sleeps just shrugged. 'A three-way split of something is at least something,' he said. 'Without Mel we got fuck-all.'

          Rossi suppressed the urge to punch himself in the head. 'I got an idea,' he said. 'How about we just pin you to the fuckin wall and --'

          'Not on my watch,' Sleep said.

'I'm guessing,' Mel said, 'and I might be wrong here, but I'm guessing you're broke. I mean, driving into Europe, you'll need to gas up the car once in a while, maybe eat.'

'You're going to fund us?' Sleeps said.

          'Call it an investment. A straight ten per cent on my outlay. Except that's ten per cent,' she warned, 'on top of the credit card interest. All of which comes off the gross before we split the take.'

          'Christ,' Rossi said. 'Why don't you just put on a balaclava?'

          'You're kidding,' Melody said, giving herself one last twirl in the mirror, flattening down her bodice, the pleated ivory-tinged skirt billowing out in her wake. 'And hide a perfectly good tiara?'

Ray

Ray hung up and threaded back through the tables to where Karen was sitting in the bay window overlooking the port, the place bustling now under a sodium glare, the ferry like a tipped-over Christmas tree out along the pier. Karen scoping for guys lounging on corners, reading newspapers in the pre-dawn chill, maybe talking into their collars once in a while.

          'No joy?' she said, reading his expression.

          'It wouldn't be like Terry not to carry a phone,' he said. 'But I'm wondering, the guy's taking a cruise, maybe he figures he won't need one this once.'

          'Unlikely, though.'

          'Yeah. He's probably knocked it off for take-off, forgot to turn it back on.' He sipped some vodka-lime. 'So, Rossi – what d'you think?'

          'I think you're being paranoid.' Then she grinned.

          'What's funny?'

          'Nothing. Just something Rossi used to say.'

          'What?'

          'Whenever he got seriously pissed off? He'd say he was paranoid. As in, 
par
-annoyed.'

          'Hilarious, yeah.' Ray held up his slinged arm. 'A foot to the left and he'd be a comic genius.'

          'I'm just saying --'

          'Forget it. What about the cruise?' 

          Karen had a crooked twist to her jaw from when she bust it on a porcelain sink to get her father put away. Now she did the thing where her lower jaw twitched, letting Ray know, even if she didn't know she was doing it, how he'd snuck up close to some line she'd drawn in her head.

          'Why would Madge tell Rossi she was taking a cruise?' she said.

          'I'm not saying she told him anything.' Ray believed this wasn't the best time to point out that Madge had confessed to Rossi she was his mother. 'But if there's even a possibility she mentioned it, then taking chances is a good way to get Terry nabbed.'

          'And Madge.'

          'Madge, you know her better than me, maybe she can arrange for a hit from behind bars. Terry I know for fact.'

'Okay,' Karen said. 'But even presuming she told him, so what? The guy's probably in ICU right now. Anna damn near chewed his head off.'

          Ray considered that. 'Any chance he'd tip off the cops?'

          'Rossi? Tip 'em over  a cliff, maybe.'

          'Okay, except the cops aren't even the half of it. He could sell us on.'

          'Sell us …?'

          'Say Rossi puts the word out. Who we are, where we're going. How much we're carrying. Then, someone hits us, Rossi gets points on the bag. A finder's fee.'

          'Jesus. Whatever happened to honour among thieves?'

          'It probably got thieved. Also, we don't know for fact Rossi's in ICU. And what we don't know for fact we don't presume.'

          'Because,' Karen said, sounding to Ray more irritated than his caution deserved, 'that's a good way of going about getting ourselves nabbed.'

          'Correct.'

          'You're still coming down off those pills,' she said. 'So you're paranoid, like I said. Maybe you should just chill out, relax.'

          'You want me to chill?' Ray buzzing on pure adrenaline by now, the tank running dry. 'Try some guy who's not Rossi,' he said, slowing it down, keeping it simple, 'he doesn't give a fuck who you are, thinks you're carrying two hundred gees, the guy's coming at you from you don't know where the fuck he's coming from. He'll chill me alright.' Karen staring now, dead-eyed. 'Or try an upstairs bunk, y'know, on a ten-stretch for conspiracy to kidnap, defraud and extort, with some bull dyke giving you the eye, waving her homemade dildo around. Think you'd feel relaxed then?'

          Karen chewed the inside of where her jaw was twisted, went back to scoping out the port. A commotion down below, a Beamer beep-beeping, white ribbons draped from its wing mirrors. Ray caught a glimpse of a bride making these wristy little waves like she was some kind of princess, a tiara sparkling under the harsh lights.

'Kar? It's only in the movies people get away. In real life they're getting away. Always. I mean, it's a constant state of getting away.'

          'So we're looking over our shoulders,' Karen said, stirring her vodka-coke with a pink swizzle stick, still staring after the Beamer. 'All the time.'

          'Running away,' Ray agreed, 'if at possible, backwards.'

          'Maybe we should get mirrors,' she said, glancing across at him now. 'One for each shoulder.'

          'I'd say one shoulder should do it. No sense in looking ridiculous, right?'

          'Okay. Just one thing.'

          'What's that?'

          'Don't call me Kar.' She plucked the swizzle-stick from the vodka-coke, jabbed it playfully at his right eye. 'My father used to called me Kar.'

          Ray took the hit. 'Okay by me,' he said.

Sleeps

'You know what I'm thinking?' Sleeps said, waving a kid-gloved hand to acknowledge the guy in the Renault letting him through, the guy tooting his horn as they filtered in ahead. 'I'm thinking this might even work.'

          'It's all about the visual impact,' Melody said. 'I mean, it's already working. Am I right?'

          'So far,' Sleeps agreed, 'like a dream.' Sleeps in a win-win situation for maybe the first time in his entire life. If he got caught, he was aiding-and-abetting, going down for soft time – sure, there'd been gunplay up at the lake, a cop involved, except Sleeps had been spark out in the gully at the time.

The upside? If they made it he was driving a Beamer into Europe, the Beamer purring like a cat with three tails. He glanced in the rear-view, caught Rossi scratching at the foxy-looking fake beard. 'You'd want to leave that alone, Rossi,' he said. 'At least until we get on board. Then, we grab a cabin, you can take it off.'  

          'Two cabins,' Mel said. 'It'd look a bit odd if you were to, y'know, share a room with the honeymooning couple. Being the driver and all.'

          'Yes'm,' Sleeps said, tipping the brim of his cap.

          'All I'm saying,' Rossi grumbled, 'is who the fuck goes away in their wedding gear? Shouldn't we be wearing something casual for the ferry?'

          'We're running late,' Mel said, adjusting her veil. 'After the ceremony? It was raining when we wanted to take the photos.'

          'Plus,' Sleeps said, 'you got that visual impact you're talking about.'

          'Exactly.' Mel gave a preeny little wave out the window. 'Even before we get there they've jumped to the conclusion, we're just married.'

          Sleeps nodded up the line of cars. 'They're waving everyone through, Rossi. I haven't seen them stop anyone yet.'

          'Law of fuckin averages,' Rossi said. 'You're guaranteed they'll stop us.'

          'To congratulate us, maybe,' Mel said. 'Take some pictures.'

          Sleeps said, 'Mel? This might be a good time to tell us where we're going. In case they ask.'

          'Okay,' she said. 'The good news is we're going to Sicily. Palermo.'

          'You're shitting me,' Rossi said. 'Sicily?'

          'Why, is that a problem?'

          'You kidding?' Rossi thumped a thumb into his chest. 'I'm half Sicilian.'

          'You are?'

          'Absofuckinlutely. Tell her, Sleeps.'

          'He's half-Sicilian,' Sleeps confirmed. Rossi with this fantasy how his father was some Mafia guy, had to bunk off back to the motherland after knocking up Rossi's mother, Interpol halfway up his crevice. Sleeps'd asked around. The word was Rossi's old man was the son of a guy owned an Italian chip shop up around Rathmines, got Shirley, half-simple and still working the canal on weekend nights, up the pole back in the day. 'So what's the bad news?' he said.

          'We need to be there Friday night, eight o'clock.'

          'That's what,' Sleeps said, closing one eye, checking the clock on the dashboard, 'forty-odd hours? You want me to drive to Sicily in forty hours?'

          'Think you can do it?'

          'A normal guy,' Sleeps said, 'would need to sleep, what, sixteen hours between now and then. So that cuts you down to twenty-four.' He honked the horn in response to a toot-toot from a Volkswagen bus alongside. 'And I'm narcoleptic.'

          'I know a place,' Rossi said, 'we can pick up some good crank. Crystal meth.'

          Sleeps started whistling 
Tulips From Amsterdam
, then checked his uniform was buttoned to the throat, rolling up now to passport control. 'Just out of curiosity,' he said, 'the chauffeur, in 
Drilling Miss Daisy
? He was the one did the drilling, right?'

          'He did his fair share,' Mel said, handing the passports forward. 'Listen, I meant to ask – what's the going rate for passports these days?'

          'Rate?' Rossi said.

Madge

Madge lay awake awhile listening to the gurgling in her tummy drown out the drip-drip of the tap in the bathroom, the dull buzz of a moped crossing the empty square, the yawn and stretch of a city slowly waking to another day. She'd known, last night, that she'd suffer the consequences of eating lobster so late. But what was a girl to do? Terry'd rung ahead, arranged it all, had the hotel set them up with a table in the room, candles flickering. The place not far from the Spanish Steps, overlooking a square – no, a 
piazza
 – with a fountain big enough to wash a polo team, horses and all.