The Big Killing (20 page)

'What for?'

'Fat Paul is dead.'

'So?' he asked, getting over the big tragedy.

'You're annoying me,' I said and knocked past him into the room. He locked the door, turned and blinked for the first time.

The room had a bare-board, unpolished floor with a few tea chests upside down pretending to be tables. There was a fiery dragon desk with red leather inlay. A portable TV and VCR were positioned on a corner facing away at a bed with a mosquito net tied in a knot above it. A blue-bladed fan with a chrome grill and lights dancing up and down its stand moved its head from side to side over the empty bed.

The Polynesian kid walked like a ballet dancer, his back straight and each foot placed with precision and flex. He knocked on the next door and opened it without waiting.

'Patrice?' said a voice which liked saying the name.

'It's him,' he replied, chilly.

I nudged past him into the fridge-cold, artificially lit room where two men were sitting. The one lounging behind the replica of the desk in the other room had very black brilliantined hair which had been combed straight back in rails over his pate. The two black shiny lines he had for eyebrows made him look sad and the spare set he had stuck to his top lip were trying to pass themselves off as a pencil moustache. His skin was pale and puffy and his eyes black with long lashes which added to his foppy sadness. He looked at me with a little bit of his tongue poking out, like a cat that's forgotten to pull it back in.

'I'm Bruce Medway.'

'Dear boy,' he said, without getting up. 'Kantari.' He held out his hand as if I should kiss it. I shook it. It was small and soft and very smooth, as if it had done nothing but stroke alabaster all its life. He flicked his wrist to introduce his companion.

'Corporal Clegg,' said the other man, who sat in a high-backed armchair—covered in red velour—with matronly legs.

'Corporal?'

'Foreign Legion,' he said, putting his left ankle on to his right knee and showing off a bare horny foot that had done some marching and kicking in its time. He was wearing the bottom half of a judo suit and a black T-shirt stretched tight over bench-pressed shoulders. The sleeves were rolled back over globe biceps with knots of veins popping out. The tattoo on his forearm told the world 'I hate Mother'. He'd used the same charm to get his cheekbone broken, his jaw dislocated, and his nose bust. He had thick, loafy hair which looked like one of those cheap wigs performers use to disguise themselves in pornographic movies.

The room was decorated bordello style—lots of red velvet, gold tassles, brocade cushions, a chaise longue, table lamps of negro statuettes, a Chinese screen with three old boys in full gear which blocked off a washbasin. There was a chessboard on the table with onyx pieces halfway through a game. The pieces were all figures in graphic sexual embrace.

'I didn't know bishops could do that,' I said.

'Amusing, don't you think?' said Kantari. 'Look at the Queen.'

'Some other time,' I said, picking up a light-green bowl, which made Kantari stiffen. I put it down.

'Not the ashtray?'

'We don't smoke.'

'I gave up, too.'

'Delighted. Please sit.'

I sat on the taut sofa and found myself at inkwell height to the angry desk. A trick that has always annoyed me.

'You have something for me?'

'I do.'

'Thank you,' he said, flicking the wrist of his duchess's hand.

'Who's he?' I asked, nodding at Clegg.

'Security,' said Clegg.

'We're secure. He can go.'

'Who says?'

'I says.'

'Gentlemen,' said Kantari.

'This is private business. I don't need security in on the meeting.'

'Very well.' He flicked his wrist from Clegg to the door. Clegg left, giving me that hard faraway look that legionnaires get from looking over sand dunes too long.

It was a negotiating technique I'd learned from a debt collector on Long Island: never accept anybody else's terms for a meeting and, when you've got your own way, do your best to show that you're really quite mature after all. It was risky when there was someone as congenial as Clegg around, always leaving his brain in his gym locker, but Kantari was straight on to it. He was a player. He sat there in his white starched shirt with black-and-gold silk bow tie, hands in prayer, legs in grey slacks tidily crossed, bare white ankles, black velvet slippers with gold crests, his pink tongue peeping out, his dyed black, failed hair licked into position—a fop, but a player.

He reached over to a bottle of water which sat on a silver tray alongside two glasses.

'Drink?'

'I'd prefer something with more bite.'

'Whisky?'

'If you have it?' I saw him hesitate.

'I only have single malt.'

'I'll force it down.'

'I want to know I'm not wasting it.'

'Water it is, then.'

'You're going to disappoint me?'

'For the time being, I probably am.'

He stood, making little difference to his height, and poured an English barman's measure of Laphroaig from the gold trolley at his side.

'Just to show I can be grown up, too.' He handed me the glass.

'I need some help to clarify a few things.'

'Money,' sighed Kantari. 'Not yet.'

'I like a change. Africa can be so predictable.'

'I work for a Syrian from Accra called B.B. He buys and ships sheanut out of Korhogo. He
used
to employ a Dane called Kurt Nielsen.'

'If you're looking for contacts, I know nothing about sheanut.'

'But Kurt Nielsen did and he was found in your Toyota Land Cruiser down by the Ebrié lagoon on Monday, twenty-eighth October. Dead. I'm taking his wife down to Abidjan to identify him.'

'They said there was a reason they couldn't release it.'

'Kurt Nielsen was in that car waiting to pick up a package for the attention of M. Kantari, Korhogo. He'd been secured to the head rest with a piece of wire and his guts torn out. Not nice on the upholstery.'

'What are you suggesting...?'

'You're not stupid, M. Kantari.'

'I haven't been out of Korhogo for two weeks.'

'Not personally.'

'How, pray?'

'Eugene Amos Gilbert?'

'Is that one man or three?'

'He's a Liberian hit man who likes to call himself Red.'

'A Liberian?' He thought about it. 'How do you know all this, dear boy?'

'I had Fat Paul's package. I saw the dead man. I saw what Red did to Fat Paul the following day and I had dealings with Red myself.'

'You think that I sent Red to kill Mr Nielsen and pick up the package?'

'And kill me.'

'Why did I report my Land Cruiser stolen?'

'Nielsen wasn't back by morning. Covered yourself.'

'Do you have the package?'

'Not on me.'

'Have you seen the film?'

'A film.'

'One thing. This Red fellow is a Liberian. Black, I presume?'

'Yes.'

'My agreement with Fat Paul was that the exchange should be between two whites. Why would I send Red Gilbert when I have Corporal Clegg who could have killed Nielsen, and, being white, not troubled your suspicious mind when you handed over the package?'

'He might start thinking with all those muscles instead of just doing,' I said. 'Why should Fat Paul send you a pornographic video?'

'I can't think,' he said, his face as dead as a poker player's with a huge hand.

I sipped the Laphroaig and its peaty bite gave me a stab of nostalgia and a longing not to be in front of this dyed queen and his ugly hangers-on.

'You're in the film business as well,' I said.

'As well?'

'As well as Abracadabra Video.'

'For my own amusement,' he said. 'I did a lot, professionally, when I lived in Beirut, before the troubles.'

'How do you make a living now?'

'I trade, like everybody else in Africa.'

'What in?'

'It's true, I've had to learn some new things.'

'Not an answer.'

'Because I don't have to. It's my business.'

'Pornography?'

'It amuses me.'

'I had you down as a little-boy merchant...'

'You're being distasteful now.'

'Four people have been killed, five if you include James Wilson. Abracadabra's offices have been firebombed and Fat Paul's house searched. If you didn't have Nielsen done then whoever did is serious. More serious than Clegg could ever be. They know about you. They know about me. They know about the film.'

'I thought you said it was pornography.'

'Not that one. There's another one in Abidjan.'

'Ah-ha.'

'That's the film Fat Paul gave me, saying he'd get back to me with the instructions. You should have seen what they did to him. Snipped off his fingers. Scooped out his genitals...'

'What do you propose to do with this film?'

'Sell it.'

'You've said something intelligent at last.'

'But to who? That I don't know.'

'You appear to have only one buyer. All you know about your other bidders is what they'll do to you if they catch up. I suggest you sell and get out before the value of your stock drops further.'

My second sip of the Laphroaig finished it. I stood and put the empty glass on the table.

'If you knew something was going on, as Fat Paul did, then why didn't you use Clegg? He looks as if he could have chewed up Red and flossed him out.'

Kantari opened his hands, revealing three feet of nothingness.

'Nielsen was expendable?' I asked. Kantari shrugged. 'Why did Nielsen do it for you?'

'The same reason anybody does anything for somebody else.'

'How did they know where he was going to be? How did they know about the drop?' Silence. 'They followed him from here?' I asked. 'They must be watching you.'

'And you.'

'Possibly.'

'Divest yourself of the problem, Mr Medway.'

'What about James Wilson?'

'Who's he?'

'Come on, M. Kantari, play the game.'

'You're holding cards. I'm holding cards.'

'James Wilson was an aide to the late Liberian president. He was found strangled and torn open in the lagoon in Treichville last week. I think he was killed because he had a tape or something that fits inside a tape and Fat Paul knew you'd be in the market for it. When they caught up with James Wilson he'd already sold out, but they got it out of him about Fat Paul. They torched his office, searched his house, but they couldn't find
him.
So what do they do? The trail's gone cold. Somebody, somewhere, tells them about the drop and where one half of it is coming from. How did they know to follow Kurt Nielsen from here? Why did you and Fat Paul set up a dummy run, and why don't they take you out of the game?'

'I've never had what they want, Mr Medway. You have. It strikes me that you should be a very worried man. The dummy run occurred precisely because I've developed the level of concern that you haven't and was proved correct. How they knew about the dummy run, or how they knew to follow Nielsen from here is a mystery which I doubt you will survive long enough to solve.'

'You seem pretty broken up about Nielsen. Did you tell him he was headed for a meat grinder?'

'If you send someone to make an exchange and offer them five hundred thousand CFA to do it they know what they're getting themselves into.'

'Did you pay upfront?'

'Half.'

'Why Nielsen?'

'The right man at the right time.'

'He needed the cash?'

'Amongst other things.'

'What about his wife?'

'I'm not sure that husband and wife would have clearly defined the status of their relationship at the time. Kurt had a liking for African girls.'

'Perhaps we should talk about money.'

'Yes. It's a pity you didn't bring the goods with you. As time goes on, situations change, circumstances materialize ... prices go down.'

'And up. What's the offer?'

'Let me see. Five hundred thousand was the delivery charge, I believe.'

'That was the messenger's fee, and anyway, it was a million.'

'Yes, well, you'd never have seen a million from Fat Paul. You met Kwabena? He always handled the rendering of accounts and as you probably realized, his gift was not that of an accountant.'

'Kwabena's dead and if you're threatening me with Clegg, don't. And remember, I'm not the messenger any more, I'm the principal.'

'A principal who doesn't know what he's selling.'

'Not yet.'

'When you're ready, come and see me.'

'I will. Thanks for the whisky. It was a delight.'

Trzinski stood out in the Le Mont Korhogo Hotel bar as the only possible American in the joint. His body was as deep as it was wide and the arms coming out of his cream short-sleeve shirt had, at the very least, wrestled bullocks to the ground. His head was hard enough to be loaded into a howitzer and was covered in a brown fuzz of crew-cut hair which he liked stroking. His nose had taken a thump or two, and had been stupid enough to come back for more, and he had light blue-grey eyes made for looking out over large expanses of sheet ice or tundra. He folded the
Ivoire Soir
he'd been reading and gave me a professional smile with some teeth he hadn't been born with.

'Al Trzinski,' he said, shaking my hand. 'Pleased to meet you.'

I was slow with the handshake and paid for it, so that I was flexing my fingers for the rest of the meeting. I sat and fascinated myself with the width of his forehead and the way his eyebrows bossed out on ridges.

'You're English?' he asked. 'Where you from?'

'London. You?'

'Omaha, Nebraska. That's beef country, if you didn't know it, Bruce. Beef and the birthplace of Marlon Brando. I think that covers it.'

At that moment I didn't see Al Trzinski as a business consultant. I saw him clearly, wearing a white coat in a cold store full of skinned carcasses hanging off hooks—the man as big as a beef cow himself.

We small-talked about Africa until the waiter came to the table and Trzinski unnerved me by ordering cold milk. I had a beer.

'Foley says you want to talk to me about diamonds,' he said.