Crime Always Pays (16 page)

'It would, huh?'

'I don't know if Ray happened to mention it,' she said, 'but Frank date-raped me when I was a kid, sixteen years old. Got me pregnant. Then, when it all came out, he agreed this deal with my father, how we'd have the kid adopted and Frank, once he finished his studies, became a doctor, he'd swing around again and marry me. So, and I don't know if you can understand this, but it was like every time we, y'know, it was like being raped all over again. I mean, it's horrible to think of them this way, but I can't help it …'

'The twins,' Terry said.

'Exactly.'

'I had no idea,' he said.

'No reason you should. But maybe you can appreciate now why it might be worth it, no matter what happens from here on in.'

'I'll bear that in mind,' Terry said. He reached across and patted the back of her hand. 'So what do you want to do?'

Madge considered. 'Right now, we have a couple of hours to kill, I wouldn't mind seeing the Acropolis.'

'No, I mean --'

'I know exactly what you mean, Terry. And I want to see the Acropolis.'

'I'll get directions,' he said.

'That's okay, I hear they put it on top of a hill.' She lifted his hand off hers, then held it for a moment and patted it gently. 'I'll find it on my own.'

Karen

Karen wondered what you might call a bad miracle, what the actual word for it was. Wondering too, Rossi with the brains of a pigeon, if he didn't have the homing instinct too. For Karen, like. She peeked around the corner again, half-hoping she'd hallucinated him, bone-tired and spending way too long in paranoid Ray's company …

          Nope. Rossi and the big guy, his muscle Ray'd called him, and the girl, right there halfway down Platform 1, standing in the middle of a pile of luggage made it look like they were playing forts. Rossi jabbing a forefinger at the girl, making a point, wearing, Christ, some kind of 
army
 gear now? Karen couldn't keep up, Rossi quick-changing like Cher at Vegas.

          She ducked back around the corner and hunkered down beside Anna, the girl curled around the khaki duffel under a wooden bench, the tip of the bushy tail covering her snout. The options being, one, find a cop, a security guard, start a rumour about Rossi smuggling dope. Karen didn't know for sure he was carrying but it was a safe bet, Rossi without dope was a pigeon on one wing. Except that way Karen'd be pulled into it too, making statements, how'd she know Rossi had dope, the whole nine yards. 

So, two: use the milling crowd for cover and make a break straight across the platform onto the train, hoping Rossi didn't spot Anna.

Or worse, Anna spot Rossi.

          And then? Karen didn't like the idea of hiding out on a train to Athens for four or five hours praying Rossi didn't stumble across them, there being no good way to explain to the relevant authorities why your pet wolf has ripped out the throat of another passenger.

          Karen had another peek around the corner, making sure the brave defenders were still inside their little Alamo, then had a rummage through her bag, found Anna's muzzle. Anna whining as Karen strapped it on.

          'I know, hon. But it's for your own good. Trust me.'

          She sat on the bench with her chin on her palm, trying to work through it. Madge had told Rossi about the cruise, okay, Ray'd got that much right at least. Except Rossi was chasing Karen, the money. Which meant he had no issue with Madge. And, Madge being with Terry, and Ray probably turning up too, to warn them off the cruise, Madge'd be okay. Unless Terry took it bad, blamed Madge for Rossi turning up with his entourage in tow, Elton John in combat fatigues. Karen trying to get a read on Terry from what Ray'd told her, trying to guess which way Terry'd jump. Karen's impression was the guy was a looker not a leaper. Ray'd said, 'To you, yeah. The guy's a pussycat you're not fucking him around. But Terry, he has the horror bad.'

          'The horror?'

          'Doing time. Some guys get it worse than others. Terry, maybe it's claustrophobia, some shit like that, I don't know, he doesn't like to talk about it. But anyone likely to put him away? Terry'll cut 'em out like that.' He'd snapped his fingers. 'I seen him do it, Karen.' Ray, solemn, placing the tip of a finger in the middle of his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose … 

          So just skipping out, jumping a ferry to the nearest island and lying low until Rossi got himself nabbed, it was only a matter of time, that wasn't a runner either. Karen, patting Anna's flank now, the girl getting restless in the confines of the noisy station, the heat oppressive, believed it was typical – the one time you actually need a guy around, just to bounce some ideas off, he's gone, taking off without so much as a sayonara. Trying now to put herself in Ray's frame of mind, wondering how he'd jump. He'd be cool, she knew that much, looking for ways to slide around the problem, not meet it head-on. One thing Ray was good at, she allowed, was getting his head up, seeing beyond, keeping his eyes on the prize. Giving off not so much attitude as altitude.

          She got up and peered around the corner again, wondering if Crockett and Bowie'd been massacred by Santa Anna yet, or if she should just send in her own Anna, be done with it. Then heard, turning back to the bench, the penetrating growl like a tank on rumble-strips that Anna gave off when the girl was particularly pleased with herself.  

          The guy hunkered down beside bench, tickling Anna under the muzzle, Anna straining her throat so he could get right in there at her chest, had a greying ponytail hanging loose between his shoulders, a red bandana up top, faded Ramones t-shirt, beige duck pants with zip pockets down the sides. Smiling up at her now, slow and easy, nice even white teeth, the brown eyes warm.

          He patted Anna way back on her head. 'Timber wolf, right?'

          'Part husky,' Karen said. 'But she's mostly Siberian.'

          'Russki, huh?' Pronouncing it 'Rooski', the drawl rolling out the word so far you could've pinned it down, mapped the Mason-Dixon line. When he stood the hems of the duck pants rose up and Karen could see he was going around barefoot. 'Can't say as I've ever met a Russki wolf with an eye-patch before.'

          'Something I can do for you?' Karen said.

          The guy, maybe it was some kind of sign, an omen, he put a forefinger against his forehead, right above the bridge of his nose. 'She's suffered some hardship. But I'm guessing, I've been watching you with her, it wasn't your doing.'

          Karen, she was fritzed, the guy had the drawl going on, those warm brown eyes, a way with Anna she still wasn't sure she believed she'd just seen – anyway, she jerked a thumb in the direction of Platform 1. 'He's over there,' she said.

          'Looking for you or her?'

          'Me.'

          'But you don't want to get into it with him right now.'

          Karen, thinking how all she wanted right now was a bath in warm cotton-wool, just nodded.

          'Okay,' the guy said. 'So what're your options?'

Sleeps

'The train?' Rossi sweating hard out on Platform 1, flushed from carrying the Louis Vuitton, Rossi designated because he was the one wanted to keep the Uzi, Johnny Priest's gak packed away under what Melody called her skimpies. Although, Sleeps'd noted, skimpy by name, not nature. 'You expect me to take the fuckin 
train
?'

          Mel saying how it was only four, five hours to Palermo. Which'd get them in with time to spare, the cruise not leaving until eight.

          'All I'm asking,' Rossi said, 'is if I look to you like the Little Loser That Can.'

It had taken a while to sort out the soldier, some kind of Croatian reservist, a National Guard-type, but he finally got it – the Beamer for the Uzi, everyone's a winner. The guy drove a hard bargain, even hungover, sitting there in his skanks in the bowels of the ferry with Rossi waving the .22 around, Rossi adamant he was keeping the fatigues. Eventually Mel'd agreed to buy the guy's ticket back to Dubrovnik to seal the deal, Sleeps pretty sure that if the juicer made it out of Dubrovnik still behind the wheel they'd be putting up a new monument, the eighth wonder of the modern world.

Then down off the ferry into the port, Rossi pushing the suitcase rather than pulling, one of the little wheels gone wonky, Rossi steering it all over the port like he was divining for water. Puce even before they made the gate, inventing a whole new language, like he'd seen the Rapture and got Tourette's rather than the gift of tongues. Once they made it outside, the possibilities, Mel rattling them off from the guide book, opened up more or less straight away – on the right the ferry terminal for the Ionian islands, with the bus station farther along the other side of the street. The train station opposite that, backing onto the sea. The place when they got in bristling with energy, engines hissing, a PA crackling in what Sleeps presumed to be Greek.

'The next one,' Mel said, consulting the timetable that wasn't just a foreign language, Sleeps intrigued by a whole new alphabet, 'goes in ten minutes. From here, Platform 1.'

'I'm leaving,' Rossi said, 'no fuckin place from no platform fuckin anything. You ever see Michael take a train?'

          'Michael?' Mel said.

          'Corleone,' Sleeps clarified.

          Mel rolled her eyes. 'We could always cab out to the airport,' she said, 'take a flight.'

          'Because,' Rossi approved, patting the suitcase, 'there'll be no customs, x-ray machines, on internal flights.'

          'I don't know about that,' Mel said. 'But that way? We don't know for sure what time we get in to Palermo. On top of that, once we touch down, we still have to get from the airport out to the cruise port.'

          'And even internal flights,' Sleeps said, 'go a lot higher than whirly chairs.'

          'Eight minutes,' Mel said.

          Rossi kicked the suitcase.

          'There's always the bus,' Sleeps said.

          'The bus?' Rossi, shocked, stared at Sleeps. 'The fuckin 
bus
?'

          'You don't want to take --'

          'Why don't we,' Rossi said, 'just start hitching lifts? Or walk it? I mean, am I right? We're sharking two hundred grand, muling a little coke, trying to get a connection set up. You see what I'm saying. Johnny Priest says, "So how'd you get to Palermo?" I say, "It was sweet, man. We took the bus."' He spat. 'The guy'd bust a fucking gut.'

          'Why would he have to know?' Sleeps said.

          '
I'd
 know.' Rossi thumped a thumb into his chest. '
Me
.'

          'Six minutes,' Mel said, drowned out by the droning PA that was, Sleeps supposed, saying the same thing as Mel, only in Greek. Sleeps, okay, was buzzing on the crizz, a little lightheaded from being up thirty-six hours. But intoxicated too by all the newness, everything fresh no matter where you looked.

          'In this game?' Rossi said. 'What you need to be is independent. Covering all the
angles. Like, what if the train breaks down? We're in fuckin Sicily, for Chrissakes. Chickens hanging out windows, the works.'

          'I don't know about that,' Sleeps said. 'Sicily is a pretty modern country.'

          'It's part of the Inter-Rail network,' Mel confirmed.

          'Um, excuse me?'

          Rossi whirled around on the guy with the bandana, the Ramones t-shirt. '
What
?'

          'You guys taking the train?'

          'Who wants to know?'

          'Uh, me,' the guy said. Exaggerating it, Sleeps could tell. Enjoying his own joke.

          'I fuckin 
know
 it's --' Rossi began.

          'How can we help?' Sleeps cut in.

          'I'm just wondering if you know what time the next train leaves for Athens.'

          'Dunno,' Rossi snapped, turning away. 'We're for Palermo.'

          'Five minutes,' Mel said quickly. 'And it goes from here, Platform 1.'

          The guy shook his head. 'They're saying that one's delayed,' he said, 'or maybe cancelled. But everyone's talking Greek, so I don't know when the next one's going.'

          'It's all, er, Greek to us too,' Mel said.

          Rossi, fuming, mopped sweat off his forehead with the cuff of the fatigues. 'I'm not on my way to Palermo inside the next hour,' he said, 'other than on any fuckin trains or buses, I'm stabbing some fucker in the heart. I'll 
do
 it, Sleeps.'

          Sleeps heaved a sigh. 'I'll see what I can do,' he said.