Casablanca Blues (2013) (30 page)

‘Casablanca’s biggest secret,’ he said.

One hundred and eighteen

At ten p.m. Rosario left her apartment and made her way through the backstreets to work. Dressed in a flowing blue silk dress and matching heels, she was wearing her best paste earrings, with a full length woollen coat to keep out the cold.

The pianist wasn’t feeling well. She was upset after the brawl down near the port. But, like everyone else at Club Souterrain, she knew it was the one night that she had to turn up. The last Thursday of the month was when the club’s owner was there.

The curious thing about the club was the secrecy that surrounded it. The staff were forbidden ever to discuss the day-to-day running practices, the clientele, or what went on behind the steel security doors at the back.

Everyone knew there was an underhand side to the business, but no one had ever told Rosario what was really going on. She knew almost nothing about the Falcon, except that he was a gentleman of means, who preferred to keep to himself.

As the pianist climbed down the staircase from the Hotel Touring in her heels, Saed was leading Ghita and Blaine to a manhole cover in the Hyatt’s parking lot, a crowbar stuffed down his shirt.

Assuming they were hotel customers, the guard at the gate had greeted them with a smile, and got on with his work.

Forcing his full weight down on the crowbar, Blaine managed to dislodge the iron cover. It came away with ease, as though it had recently been removed.

A tubular shaft descended into the earth. It was awash with cockroaches and spider’s webs.

Blaine shone his torch down the hole.

‘There are handles,’ he said.

‘I’m not going in there,’ Ghita whimpered. ‘Not for anything.’

The American touched a hand to her arm.

‘Not even to get your old life back?’ he said. ‘Not even for your father?’

Saed went first, his small hands swinging from one rung to the next.

Then it was Ghita’s turn. She let out a pained squeal as she went.

After her, went Blaine. He struggled to pull the manhole cover back into place before lowering himself down the shaft.

The further they went, the more the cockroaches, until there were so many that they all melded into a seamless seething landscape of them. Taking his lead from Saed, Blaine switched off the lamp and allowed his eyes to adjust to the subdued light.

They descended for five minutes, until they reached the main sewer pipe. There was a residue of pungent sludge at the bottom.

‘It’s raw sewage,’ said Blaine.

Ghita gagged, and moaned a little more, but coaxed herself to be brave.

‘I’m pleased I didn’t wear my Jimmy Choos,’ she said.

One hundred and nineteen

Forty men were toiling away in an underground warehouse behind the Club Souterrain.

Each of them was dressed in special overalls, without pockets, and was forbidden to wear anything underneath. The leader of the team was a dark, crow-faced man called Larbi. Having worked for the Falcon for almost a decade, he was one of the few men in a position of responsibility.

‘Those last bales of banknotes have to be counted again,’ he instructed.

‘But they’ve been counted once already,’ one of the men replied.

‘
Twice
. They must be counted twice. And that’s the order.’

Larbi jerked a thumb to the counting machines. The men started feeding the wads of notes through them a second time. There was a sense of anticipation and of fear, as though they were being watched.

And of course they were.

Mounted on the walls were at least a dozen surveillance cameras. Some of them had wide-angle lenses, while others focused close up on the hands operating the counting machines. The room had been specially designed by a team brought in from Corsica. It could be hermetically sealed and flooded within a matter of minutes, or pumped full of poison gas in the event of a raid.

At half-past ten, Larbi clapped his hands.

‘Hurry!’ he yelled, breaking over the noise of the counting machines. ‘And make sure the bundles are double-tied!’

He noted down the result of the first count in the red ledger. The rows of columns were tight with numbers, dates, and code-names.

At that moment, a mousy man in a beige polyester suit and cheap city shoes shuffled into the warehouse through an armoured door. He had a rough unwashed appearance, and was severely stressed.

‘He’s here,’ he said. ‘And he wants to know the total.’

Larbi gave a number, rounding it up.

‘Is that all?’

‘No, we’re still waiting for the Marrakech deposit. It should be here any minute.’

‘They are cutting it close.’ Pulling up his polyester cuff, the mousy man glanced at his watch. ‘He’s not going to be pleased.’

‘How’s the club tonight?’

‘Busy. There’s a cruise ship full of Russians docked at the port.’

Larbi wiped a hand down over his face.

‘We’ll be ready on time,’ he said.

One hundred and twenty

‘Can you hear that?’ said Blaine, as they walked double speed through the tunnel.

‘
What
?’

‘Listen.’

‘It sounds like a vibration... like music,’ said Ghita.

‘The Argentine pianist,’ replied Blaine. ‘She must be up there playing in the club.’

‘That means we’re getting close.’

‘We have to climb up to that level. We are far below them,’ said Saed.

He took out the map, squinted at the converging zigzags in the torchlight.

‘Can you see a ladder?’

‘Where?’

‘Over there. It should be on the right.’

The American skimmed the beam over the wall, sending the cockroaches into frenzy.

‘There!’

‘Thank God for that.’

They hurried over.

The torch in his right hand, Blaine climbed as fast as he could. He slammed his fist up on the hatch, once, twice.

‘It’s no use,’ he called down. ‘It won’t budge!’

Saed looked at the map.

‘If we go on, and then double back, it will take far too long,’ he said.

Blaine slapped his hands together heatedly.

‘If only we had something to work on the rust,’ he said. ‘It hasn’t been opened in years.’

‘I could go back and get a knife,’ Saed said.

‘We don’t have time for that, either. Let’s try to make use of anything we’ve got. Empty your pockets.’

The shoeshine boy rooted about and, a moment later, pulled out a golf ball, a rusty nail, three inches of metal twine, and a glass eye.

‘All I’ve got is some money and this,’ said Ghita, fishing a small bottle of clear liquid from her purse.

‘What is it?’

‘Hand sanitizer.’

The American climbed down, took the container, and clambered up again.

With care, he squeezed the gel into the groove. Then, with all his strength, he pounded at the hatch.

It moved a fraction.

Blaine squeezed more gel, and thumped again. Suddenly, the hatch popped open.

‘
Alhamdillillah
!’ Ghita exclaimed.

They climbed up, and closed the hatch behind them.

On the upper level they found themselves at the spot where several tunnels converged. Saed led the way down the widest one, map in hand. Much drier than the lower level, it hardly stank at all.

After a relatively straight stretch, it curved around sharply to the left, before arcing back to the right.

They took another left, then a right and, gradually, the passageway tapered until it became so narrow that they were forced to advance sideways.

All of a sudden it ended.

‘This is where our luck runs out,’ Blaine said.

He shone the light on the walls, examining every inch of the brickwork.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ said Ghita. She turned and, as she did so, Blaine reached out and grabbed her arm.

‘What is it?’

‘Wait.’

The American put his hand on the facing wall and ran it down the bricks slowly, in concentration. Then taking a step back, he lunged at the wall with his shoulder.

A door swung open.

‘Casablanca Magic!’ he whispered.

They stepped through, and found themselves in a bright modern-looking corridor. It was damp-sealed, and was illuminated by hundred-watt bulbs. There were voices in the distance, and the churning sound of counting machines.

Allowing his breathing to shallow, Blaine led the way.

Behind him was Ghita. She was so close that he could feel her warmth. Saed was just behind her.

They tiptoed down the corridor and arrived at a steel door. Mounted at its centre was a wheel, the kind they use on submarines.

In the distance was the sound of a large vehicle reversing.

Blaine put his ear to the steel. He closed his eyes, counted to three, and rotated the wheel to open the door.

The counting room.

From the limited vantage point, Blaine could make out bales of banknotes, dozens of them, all piled up squarely on one another. His eyes widened, as the adrenalin hit again.

‘Jesus Christ, d’you see all that?’

‘And there’s the same amount again over there,’ said Ghita.

‘Sounds like they’re counting the money.’

‘Must mean they are getting it ready to move.’

‘Follow me,’ said Blaine, creeping down an alley between the bales. They towered from floor to ceiling like the walls of a fortress. He motioned to the far end of the warehouse. ‘We’ve got to get over there if we have a chance at getting the red book.’

Just then, a second armoured door swung open without the faintest hint of sound. It led through to the club.

A suited man with thin grey hair entered the warehouse. He was smoking a cigar, his face taut with anger.

‘The transfer vehicles are here!’ he hollered. ‘Get this paper out of here immediately!’

Larbi looked at the wall clock.

‘Yes, sir!’

Crouched down in the passage between the bales, Ghita couldn’t believe her ears.

‘It’s
him
!’ she whispered. ‘I know it’s him!’

‘
Who
?’

‘The Falcon.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I
know
him!’

‘Huh?’

Ghita craned her neck around the end of the passage. An oversized counting machine was obstructing much of the view. But she could see the floor. The foreman was wearing a pair of sneakers, and the other man was in handmade shoes, crafted from indigo leather.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Ghita, almost collapsing. ‘Harass is the Falcon... the man who runs Casablanca’s underworld?’

Blaine didn’t understand.

‘Who? What?’

‘I’d know those awful shoes anywhere!’

Blaine frowned.

‘
Shoes
?’

‘He’s my father’s best friend. He
was
my father’s best friend. The man whose son I was about to marry, the guy who now chairs the board of Globalcom!’

The Vertu phone cradled in the Falcon’s fingers buzzed. He looked at the number, cursed loudly, then took the call.

‘
Bonsoir
chérie
, no I can’t talk now. I’m very busy. Yes, later... maybe later. I’ll try to do my best.’

There was a sound from the other side of the steel door.

‘I am going through,’ he said. ‘Make sure all of this is ready to leave in fifteen minutes. Is that understood?’

Larbi looked back at the team running bills through the counting machines.

‘Fifteen minutes!’ he snapped.

The Falcon stepped through the armoured door, down a short passage, and into the Club Souterrain.

It was in full swing.

There must have been three hundred people in there – gamblers, drinkers, carousers of every sort. In the middle of the salon, Rosario was crooning at the piano, a half-empty glass of vodka martini on a coaster beside the music stand. Her hands were playing
Blue Moon
again, but her mind was far away.

She was thinking about the night she had undergone the knife in Dr. Burou’s clinic, about going to sleep a boy and waking up a girl.

The
click click click
of the roulette ball broke through for a moment, and was followed by a wave of cheering and laughter, by expletives, and by the sound of the croupier raking in the chips.

At the bar, a huddle of waitresses were attending to their orders. Their low décolletage might have been scandalous elsewhere in Casablanca, but at Club Souterrain, scandal was unknown. The house had one rule and one rule alone: any behaviour however depraved – if made in the name of decadence – stayed within the club.

Gentlemen clients had been known to strip naked and parade about wearing nothing more than a feather boa, or to down an entire bottle of bourbon, before spewing their guts out over the red velvet furniture.

And no one ever said a word.

Although, of course, this didn’t stop the club from filming the illicit activities through secret cameras. There were sixty of them, positioned so discreetly that none of the staff was even aware of their existence.

Weaving his way through the room, the Falcon greeted the regulars, before checking the running totals in the betting pits. The kind of man who was incapable of trust, he was all the more mistrustful on a night when the funds were moved.

The Falcon perused the figures on the clipboards one by one. He showed no emotion. He never did. As far as he was concerned, emotion and gambling were quite incompatible, two elements to be kept absolutely apart.

He checked his watch.

Three minutes to go.

He signalled to the barman to send a round of free drinks to the Russians.

‘Make sure they leave with enough cash that they return tomorrow night,’ he told the duty manager in a stony voice. ‘And tomorrow suck them dry.’

He turned, and slipped back through the rear entrance.

As he did so, Ghita made her move. She had spotted the red bound register lying on a desk to the right of the telephones. Nimbly, she scurried out, snatched it, and retreated into the passageway, between the two lofty walls of paper money.

‘I got it!’ she whispered.

Blaine hugged her, and the three of them beat a hasty retreat.

They were about to step through into the tunnel, when Ghita tripped. She flew forward, landing on her side, blood streaming from her knee.