James Bond Anthology (316 page)

The best drink in the day is just before the first one (the Red Stripe didn’t count). James Bond put ice in the glass and three fingers of the bourbon and swilled it round the glass to cool it and break it down with the ice. He pulled a chair up to the window, put a low table beside it, took
Profiles in Courage
by Jack Kennedy out of his suitcase, happened to open it at Edmund G. Ross (‘I looked down into my open grave’), then went and sat down, letting the scented air, a compound of sea and trees, breathe over his body, naked save for the underpants. He drank the bourbon down in two long draughts and felt its friendly bite at the back of his throat and in his stomach. He filled up his glass again, this time with more ice to make it a weaker drink, and sat back and thought about Scaramanga.

What was the man doing now? Talking long distance with Havana or the States? Organizing things for tomorrow? It would be interesting to see these fat, frightened stockholders! If Bond knew anything, they would be a choice bunch of hoods, the type that had owned the Havana hotels and casinos in the old Batista days, the men that held the stock in Las Vegas, that looked after the action in Miami. And whose money was Scaramanga representing? There was so much hot money drifting around the Caribbean that it might be any of the syndicates, any of the banana dictators from the islands or the mainland. And the man himself? It had been damned fine shooting that had killed the two birds swerving through the window of 3½. How in hell was Bond going to take him? On an impulse, Bond went over to his bed and took the Walther from under the pillow. He slipped out the magazine and pumped the single round on to the counterpane. He tested the spring of the magazine and of the breech and drew a quick bead on various objects round the room. He found he was aiming an inch or so high. But that would be because the gun was lighter without its loaded magazine. He snapped the magazine back and tried again. Yes, that was better. He pumped a round into the breech, put up the safety and replaced the gun under the pillow. Then he went back to his drink and picked up the book and forgot his worries in the high endeavours of great men.

The eggs came and were good. The mousseline sauce might have been mixed at Maxim’s. Bond had the tray removed, poured himself a last drink and prepared for bed. Scaramanga would certainly have a master key. Tomorrow, Bond would whittle himself a wedge to jam the door. For tonight, he up-ended his suitcase just inside the door and balanced the three glasses on top of it. It was a simple booby trap but it would give him all the warning he needed. Then he took off his shorts and got into bed and slept.

A nightmare woke him, sweating, around two in the morning. He had been defending a fort. There were other defenders with him, but they seemed to be wandering around aimlessly, ineffectively, and when Bond shouted to rally them they seemed not to hear him. Out on the plain, Scaramanga sat bassackwards on the café chair beside a huge golden cannon. Every now and then, he put his long cigar to the touch-hole and there came a tremendous flash of soundless flame. A black cannon ball, as big as a football, lobbed up high in the air and crashed down into the fort with a shattering noise of breaking timber. Bond was armed with nothing but a longbow, but even this he could not fire because, every time he tried to fit the notch of the arrow into the gut, the arrow slipped out of his fingers to the ground. He cursed his clumsiness. Any moment now and a huge cannon ball would land on the small open space where he was standing! Out on the plain, Scaramanga reached his cigar to the touch-hole. The black ball soared up. It was coming straight for Bond! It landed just in front of him and came rolling very slowly towards him, getting bigger and bigger, smoke and sparks coming from its shortening fuse. Bond threw up an arm to protect himself. Painfully, the arm crashed into the side of the night table and Bond woke up.

Bond got out of bed, gave himself a cold shower and drank a glass of water. By the time he was back in bed, he had forgotten the nightmare and he went quickly to sleep and slept dreamlessly until 7.30 in the morning. He put on swimming trunks, removed the barricade from in front of the door and went out into the passage. To his left, a door into the garden was open and sun streamed in. He went out and was walking over the dewy grass towards the beach when he heard a curious thumping noise from among the palms on his right. He walked over. It was Scaramanga, in trunks, attended by a good-looking young Negro holding a flame-coloured Terry cloth robe, doing exercises on a trampoline. Scaramanga’s body gleamed with sweat in the sunshine as he hurled himself high in the air from the stretched canvas and bounded back, sometimes from his knees or his buttocks and sometimes even from his head. It was an impressive exercise in gymnastics. The prominent third nipple over the heart made an obvious target! Bond walked thoughtfully down to the beautiful crescent of white sand fringed with gently clashing palm trees. He dived in and, because of the other man’s example, swam twice as far as he had intended.

James Bond had a quick and small breakfast in his room, dressed, reluctantly because of the heat, in his dark suit, armed himself and went for a walk round the property. He quickly got the picture. The night, and the lighted façade, had covered up a half-project. The East Wing on the other side of the lobby was still lath and plaster. The body of the hotel – the restaurant, night club and living-rooms that were the tail of the T-shaped structure, were mock-ups – stages for a dress rehearsal hastily assembled with the essential props, carpets, light fixtures and a scattering of furniture, but stinking of fresh paint and wood shavings. Perhaps fifty men and women were at work, tacking up curtains, Hoovering carpets, fixing the electricity, but no one was employed on the essentials, the big cement mixers, the drills, the ironwork, that lay about behind the hotel like the abandoned toys of a giant. At a guess, the place would need another year and another five million dollars to become what the plans had said it was to be. Bond saw Scaramanga’s problem. Someone was going to complain about this. Others would want to get out. But then again, others would want to buy in, but cheaply, and use it as a tax-loss to set against more profitable enterprises elsewhere. Better to have a capital asset, with the big tax concessions that Jamaica gave, than pay the money to Uncle Sam, Uncle Fidel, Uncle Trujillo, Uncle Leoni of Venezuela. So Scaramanga’s job would be to blind his guests with pleasure, send them back half drunk to their syndicates. Would it work? Bond knew such people and he doubted it. They might go to bed drunk with a pretty coloured girl, but they would awake sober or they wouldn’t have their jobs, they wouldn’t be coming here with their discreet brief-cases.

He walked farther back on the property. He wanted to locate his car. He found it in a deserted lot behind the West Wing. The sun would get at it where it was so he drove it forward and into the shade of a giant ficus tree. He checked the petrol and pocketed the ignition key. There were not too many small precautions he could take.

On the parking lot, the smell of the swamps was very strong. While it was still comparatively cool, he decided to walk farther. He soon came to the end of the young shrubs and guinea grass the landscaper had laid on. Behind these was desolation – a great area of sluggish streams and swampland from which the hotel land had been recovered. Egrets, shrikes and Louisiana herons rose and settled lazily, and there were strange insect noises and the call of frogs and gekkos. On what would probably be the border of the property a biggish stream meandered towards the sea, its muddy banks pitted with the holes of land crabs and water rats. As Bond approached there was a heavy splash and a man-sized alligator left the bank and showed its snout before submerging. Bond smiled to himself. No doubt, if the hotel got off the ground, all this area would be turned into an asset. There would be native boatmen, suitably attired as Arawak Indians, a landing-stage and comfortable boats, with fringed shades, from which the guests could view the ‘tropical jungle’ for an extra ten dollars on the bill.

Bond glanced at his watch. He strolled back. To the left, not yet screened by the young oleanders and crotons that had been planted for this eventual purpose, were the kitchens and laundry and staff quarters, the usual back quarters of a luxury hotel, and music, the heartbeat thump of Jamaican calypso, came from their direction – presumably the Kingston combo rehearsing. Bond walked round and under the portico into the main lobby. Scaramanga was at the desk talking to the manager. When he heard Bond’s footsteps on the marble, he turned and looked and gave Bond a curt nod. He was dressed as on the previous day, and the high white cravat suited the elegance of the hall. He said ‘Okay, then’ to the manager and, to Bond, ‘Let’s go take a look at the conference room.’

Bond followed him through the restaurant door and then through another door to the right that opened into a lobby, one of whose walls was taken up with the glasses and plates of a buffet. Beyond this was another door. Scaramanga led the way through into what would one day perhaps be a card room or writing-room. Now there was nothing but a round table in the centre of a wine-red carpet and seven white leatherette arm-chairs with scratch pads and pencils in front of them. The chair facing the door, presumably Scaramanga’s, had a white telephone in front of it.

Bond went round the room and examined the windows and the curtains and glanced at the wall brackets of the lighting. He said, ‘The brackets could be bugged. And of course there’s the telephone. Like me to go over it?’

Scaramanga looked at Bond stonily. He said, ‘No need to. It’s bugged all right. By me. Got to have a record of what’s said.’

Bond said, ‘All right, then. Where do you want me to be?’

‘Outside the door. Sitting reading a magazine or something. There’ll be the general meeting this afternoon around four. Tomorrow there’ll mebbe be one or two smaller meetings, mebbe just me and one of the guys. I want all these meetings not to be disturbed. Got it?’

‘Seems simple enough. Now, isn’t it about time you told me the names of these men and more or less who they represent and which ones, if any, you’re expecting trouble from?’

Scaramanga said, ‘Take a chair and a paper and pencil.’ He strolled up and down the room. ‘First there’s Mr Hendriks. Dutchman. Represents the European money, mostly Swiss. You needn’t bother with him. He’s not the arguing type. Then there’s Sam Binion from Detroit.’

‘The Purple Gang?’

Scaramanga stopped in his stride and looked hard at Bond. ‘These are all respectable guys, Mister Whoosis.’

‘Hazard is the name.’

‘All right. Hazard, then. But respectable, you understand. Don’t go getting the notion that this is another Appalachian. These are all solid business men. Get me? This Sam Binion, for instance. He’s in real estate. He and his friends are worth mebbe twenty million bucks. See what I mean? Then there’s Leroy Gengerella. Miami. Owns Gengerella Enterprises. Big shot in the entertainment world. He may cut up rough. Guys in that line of business like quick profits and a quick turnover. And Ruby Rotkopf, the hotel man from Vegas. He’ll ask the difficult questions because he’ll already know most of the answers from experience. Hal Garfinkel from Chicago. He’s in Labour Relations, like me. Represents a lot of Teamster Union funds. He shouldn’t be any trouble. Those unions have got so much money they don’t know where to put it. That makes five. Last comes Louie Paradise from Phoenix, Arizona. Owns Paradise Slots, the biggest people in the one-armed bandit business. Got casino interests too. I can’t figure which way he’ll bet. That’s the lot.’

‘And who do you represent, Mr Scaramanga?’

‘Caribbean money.’

‘Cuban?’

‘I said Caribbean. Cuba’s in the Caribbean, isn’t it?’

‘Castro or Batista?’

The frown was back. Scaramanga’s right hand balled into a fist. ‘I told you not to rile me, Mister. So don’t go prying into my affairs or you’ll get hurt. And that’s for sure.’ As if he could hardly control himself longer, the big man turned on his heel and strode brusquely out of the room.

James Bond smiled. He turned back to the list in front of him. A strong reek of high gangsterdom rose from the paper. But the name he was most interested in was Mr Hendriks who represented ‘European money’. If that was his real name, and he was a Dutchman, so, James Bond reflected, was he.

He tore off three sheets of paper to efface the impression of his pencil and walked out and along into the lobby. A bulky man was approaching the desk from the entrance. He was sweating mightily in his unseasonable woollen-looking suit. He might have been anybody – an Antwerp diamond merchant, a German dentist, a Swiss bank manager. The pale, square-jowled face was totally anonymous. He put a heavy brief-case on the desk and said in a thick Central European accent, ‘I am Mr Hendriks. I think it is that you have a room for me, isn’t it?’

8 | PASS THE CANAP
É
S!

The cars began rolling up. Scaramanga was in evidence. He switched a careful smile of welcome on and off. No hands were shaken. The host was greeted either as ‘Pistol’ or ‘Mr S’ except by Mr Hendriks, who called him nothing.

Bond stood within earshot of the desk and fitted the names to the men. In general appearance they were all much of a muchness. Dark-faced, clean-shaven, around five feet six, hard-eyed above thinly smiling mouths, curt of speech to the manager. They all held firmly on to their brief-cases when the bell boys tried to add them to the luggage on the rubber-tyred barrows. They dispersed to their rooms along the East Wing. Bond took out his list and added hat-check notations to each one except Hendriks who was clearly etched in Bond’s memory. Gengerella became ‘Italian origin, mean, pursed mouth’; Rotkopf, ‘Thick neck, totally bald, Jew’; Binion, ‘bat ears, scar down left cheek, limp’; Garfinkel, ‘the toughest. Bad teeth, gun under right armpit’; and, finally, Paradise, ‘Showman type, cocky, false smile, diamond ring’ .