Crime Always Pays (22 page)

          He went back down to the car, opened the trunk. No fake Louis Vuitton. He pulled up the trunk's floor and hauled out the spare tire, expecting Johnny Priest's parcel to be gone too. Except that was there. He wondered if she'd forgotten about it, or couldn't find it, or if it was just, the girl checking out, having it on her toes, she hadn't wanted to give them any reason to chase her.

That one gave Sleeps a pang, an empty feeling it took a chocolate malt and three cheeseburgers to fill again. 
So you're saying, it's a lack of ambition
. Munching steadily, dribbling hot sauce onto the pink daisy, Sleeps realised he was going to have to meet Mel halfway.

          So he filched a big guy's rucksack, the guy snoring on a bench behind the self-service restaurant, found a quiet restroom and dug in. Came out wearing baggy denims, a white tee under a v-necked short-sleeved blue shirt, navy Caterpillar trainers that pinched a little at the toes so Sleeps had to dump his socks. He bought a shaving kit at a restroom vending machine and scrubbed up, even laced some gel through his hair. Then sallied forth, heading first for the ferry's bar, and saw, soon as he stepped through the doors, Mel at the bar with Ray's arm around her shoulders, close enough to suck out Ray's fillings and not need a straw.  

          Sleeps let the door swing to, went back up on deck and made his way to the stern. Spent a while looking down into the ferry's wake, the black sea churning up greeny-white, the phosphorescence hypnotic. Sleeps tempted to dig into Johnny's parcel, do all the coke in one go. Fritz up his works with one lightning-bolt to the brain.

Sleeps squidging his bare toes in the new trainers with an empty ache inside a ton of cheeseburgers wouldn't fill.

Karen

Pyle put the carton of orange juice down on the bedside locker, the half-pint of vodka, two ham-and-cheese paninis, a jumbo bag of chips. Went in the bathroom and came out with the toothbrush glass. 'This guy Ray,' he said. 'You were saying he has an Elvis quiff, right? Only blonde.'

          'Elvis '56,' Karen said through a mouthful of chips. 'Why?'

          'He's upstairs in the bar.'

          'Shit.'

'Draped around some girl,' Pyle said, pouring the vodka, 'looks a lot like Elvis '77.'

'There's a girl?'

'Woman enough for two,' Pyle said approvingly. He tossed off the vodka-orange, poured one for Karen. 'So what's this mean?' he said. 'We doping him too?'

Karen waved away the vodka-orange. 'He isn't chasing me,' she said. 'He's got no reason.'

'Hell of a coincidence, him just turning up like that. I mean, there's a lot of ferries leave the Piraeus every day. And he just happens to be on the one you're on.'

'There was a girl with Rossi,' Karen said, 'coming off the ferry into Amsterdam, she looked built to model mosquito nets for four-poster beds.'

'Then that could be her, sure.'

'So what the fuck's Ray playing at?'

'Pat-a-cakes, it looked to me.' Pyle chugged another vodka-orange. He said, 'The guy left you most of the money, the .38 so you'd be safe. Why should he turn on you now?'

Karen went into her spiel, her experience with men. Starting with her father, who she'd forked in the chest and got put away. 'I had to bust my own jaw to convince them,' she said, thumbing just above her chin, the twist where the bone hadn't fused properly. 'Then I went to visit him and started screaming about how he'd been fucking me up the ass since I was a kid.'

Pyle winced.

Then, Karen went on, Rossi, the guy in more than he was out in the ten years she'd known him, a rogue loser gene in his DNA. And now Ray, who, there was a good chance, he'd been scheming with this cop Doyle behind Karen's back. Except, when the heat came on? Ray'd bolted. And was now, by the sounds of things, hanging out with Rossi's crew.

'What I'm saying,' she said, 'is if you stick with a guy long enough, he'll turn on you. Ray, it took him a whole week.'

          Pyle sipped his vodka-orange. 'I've known you what, ten hours? Twelve?' Karen shrugged. 'In that time,' he said, 'you've done a bunk from this guy Rossi, then disarmed a cop, doped him to the eyeballs. All the while running around with a bag of cash you're saying you scammed from some insurance company, a .38 tucked in there too. A bona fide wolf in tow, with this cop, Doyle, possibly on your tail.'

          'What's your point?' Karen said.

          'You're not at any point wondering,' Pyle said, 'and I'm just asking here, just throwing it out, if maybe you're not a little high maintenance?'

Doyle

Doyle and Sparks wound up on a beach to watch the sun come up, a bonfire down to embers, crates of Amstel in the tide keeping cool. Some Aussie guy strumming a guitar, Crowded House songs, Doyle never could stand Crowded fucking House.

Sparks copped off around dawn, one of two Aussie guys, strapping, they played footy for the same team back home. On a gap year, working their way around Europe. Except Doyle'd lost interest when she learned her guy, Jamie, was just three months older than exactly half her age. The guys horsing around, asking Sparks if she'd thrown her knickers at John or Paul when the Beatles were still touring. 

          'They're just kids,' Doyle warned.

          'Like, duh.' Sparks touching up her mascara in the compact mirror, putting Doyle in mind of a guy shovelling sand onto lava flow.

          'I mean we're just their older woman story for when they get back home.'

          Sparks packed away her stuff, put out her hand and shook Doyle's. 'Hi,' she said, 'I'm Miss Happy Ever-After.'

          So Sparks'd headed off with Ron, linking his arm going up the beach, telling him how her favourite tae kwan do move was the old bassai dai with a yama tsuki combo, asking Ron if he'd ever saw a guy'd had his nose cartilage jammed up into his brain. Leaving Doyle behind, tired and cold. Sand in her skimpies. Doyle wondering if island life was all it was cracked up to be.

          When Jamie, blonde dreads and an ironic tie-dyed Deadhead tee, ambled across and sat down, offering Doyle a joint, Doyle had a toke and then told him she was a cop working undercover. The guy thinking this was hilarious until Doyle dug in her bag and showed him the badge she shouldn't have been carrying, being suspended.

Three minutes later Doyle was alone with the joint, the bonfire and two crates of Amstel, no idea of where she was or how to make it back to the Katina.  

          So she smoked the joint slow, the first in a long time, and watched the sun slide up around the headland, the greens and violets burning off, the sea hardening to petrol-blue and then softening to azure. The headlands either side bright orange like new brick and dotted with dusty scrub. A fishing smack bumbling along way out to sea, its foamy wake a brilliant white. Doyle felt a long, long way from home.

          The buzzing of her phone woke her up.

          'Hey,' she said, untangling her tongue from the web some spider had built in her throat, the lesser-spotted musty sock spider. 'What's up?'

          'You alright?'

          'Fine, yeah. You still hanging out at Jamie's cradle?'

          'It's crib, Doyle. Get with the programme.'

          'I said cradle, I meant cradle.'

          'Listen, where are you?'

          'Still on the beach, I fell asleep.' Doyle dry-washed her face with her free hand, wondering if she should try to open her eyes sometime soon. 'What time is it?'

          'Nearly nine. The reason I'm ringing, a ferry's just pulled in and a wolf got off.'

          Doyle came awake fast. 'It's Karen?'

          'Karen I've never seen. But there's a girl, yeah, she has this wolf on a chain leash. A guy with her looks like Johnny Depp's dad.'

          'Ray,' Doyle said, 'looks nothing like Johnny Depp. More skinny Elvis, a quiff going on.'

          'Okay, I see him now. Yep, he's the one the wolf's attacking.'

          'Sparks? What's happening?'

          'Ray's down. The big girl, she looks worried.'

          The big girl? 'Where are you, Sparks?'

          'The port. Place called Ios Burger, they do a nice Irish fry, three sausages, beans on top. Good coffee, too. So who'd you want me to follow, Karen or Ray?'

Melody

Ray said, 'Karen, meet Melody. Mel, Karen.'

          'Charmed I'm sure,' Mel said.

          Karen ignored the outstretched hand. 'Ray, Pyle. Pyle, Ray. Anna you probably remember.'

          ''Course. Hey, Anna.' Which was when Mel realised Ray was drunker than she'd believed, Ray hunkering down to pat Anna and getting a head-butt for his troubles that knocked him clean out of his unlaced trainers. Pyle helped him up. 'So this is Ios,' Ray said. 'I was expecting, I don't know, less wolves.'

          'Although,' Karen said, 'I hear they have a big rat problem. So you should feel right at home.'

          Ray leaned on Pyle's shoulder pulling on his left trainer, then the right. 'Is it the rats that're big,' he said, 'or that there's loads of 'em?'

          'He told Rossi,' Mel said to Karen, 'you were going to Crete. When Rossi had a gun on him.'

          It wasn't easy when she was already sweating, the sun like a laser clearing the village on top of the hill, but Karen did her best aiming a frosty eye at Mel.

          'What I'm saying is,' Mel said, 'I thought he was a rat too.'

          'Was the gun loaded?'

          'No, but we didn't know that until after.'

          'Cojones, man,' Pyle said. He held out a fist. Ray, at the second attempt, managed to touch knuckles, then staggered a little. Mel starting to realise Ray was sweating harder than he should be, the guy pale, pinching now at his eyes.

'This being the dude,' Pyle said, 'shot you in the arm?'

          Ray closed his eyes. 'That was a fluke.'

          'I wouldn't,' Pyle said, 'I was you, give him another opportunity. Three's the charm, man.'

          Ray looked directly at Karen. 'Rossi won't be trying again,' he said.

          It was the way he said it.

          'Because,' Karen said, 'you sent him off to Crete.'

          'The south coast,' Mel confirmed.

          'In a box,' Ray said.

The ferry blew a long wail going out around the headland. Ray turned to watch it go and then his shoulders sagged and one knee went. He fell forward onto the other knee, half-twisting to protect his broken arm.

'I could do,' he said over his shoulder, 'with some hospital.' Then he pitched face-first into the dirt. 

Madge

Terry, sprawled across the bed in a white towelling robe, sipping room-service coffee and watching a movie on his portable DVD player, asked Madge if she'd had a good morning.

          'Not so's you'd notice,' Madge said, lighting one of Terry's cigarettes. 'The all-you-can-eat buffet is actually inedible. Then, sunrise up on the observation deck? You're observing nothing but fat asses, this scrum all pointing cameras at the sun coming up. I wouldn't have minded so much but they were all Japanese, from the Land of the Rising Sun. So I went for a swim and this guy came along, had that whole white socks under sandals thing going on, baggy shorts, he hunkers down on the edge of the pool flashing me some of his undercarriage. Wants to know if I want to play giant chess, except what he means is giant chest, he's about to topple over into my cleavage. On a rescue mission, maybe, taking the chance that's where his self-respect disappeared to.'

          'I didn't know you played chess,' Terry said.

          'We didn't make it to the chess. He's helping me out of the pool, I haul back harder than I should, he goes in over my head. This is the shallow end, mind. Comes down on top of this three-year-old wearing inflatable armbands, a little Donald Duck rubber ring. So now he's being treated for concussion and I'm banned from the pool.' She stubbed the cigarette. 'How's your movie?'

          'Good, yeah.' He jerked a thumb at the phone. 'Listen, Karen rang. Says she's on Ios. If you want to swing by, pick up your cut, she'll be there a few days.'

'What'd you say?'

'I told her if you weren't game, I'd meet her myself.' He put the DVD player to one side. 'No offence, Madge, but --'

'How much would it cost to rent a helicopter?' Madge said.