The Loo Sanction (18 page)

“As you wish, sir. But be careful on the streets. It is late, and there are
apache
about.” There was as much threat in this as warning.

         

Jonathan walked through the tangle of back streets slowly, his hands plunged deep into his pockets. Fog churned lazily around the streetlamps of the deserted lanes. He had made a pawn gambit, and it had been passed. He had lost nothing, but his position had become passive. They now made the moves and he reacted. An hour was a long time. Time enough for Amazing Grace to contact The Cloisters. Time enough for Strange to decide. Time enough to send men. Perhaps he had made an error in not bringing a gun.

On the other hand, the Vicar had said The Cloisters people were seeking him out for some reason, and they had been doing so even before Loo had involved him in this thing. If Strange needed him, why would he seek to harm him? Unless they knew he was working for Loo. And how would they know that?

It was a goddamn merry-go-round.

Near a corner, he found a telephone kiosk. His primary reason for leaving the Cellar d'Or had been to phone Vanessa and make sure she was off in Devon and out of the line of fire. As the unanswered phone double-buzzed, his eyes wandered over hastily penned and scratched messages: doodles, telephone numbers, an announcement that one Betty Kerney was devoted to an exotic protein diet. There was a sad graffito penned in a precise, cramped hand: “Mature person seeks company of young man. Strolls in the country and fishing. Mostly friendship.” No meeting time; no telephone number. Just a need shared with a wall. After the phone had rung many times, Jonathan hung up. He was relieved to know that Vanessa was out of it.

It was nearly time to return to the Cellar d'Or, and he had seen nothing of the man in the blue raincoat since he had left him trying to disentangle himself from the coyly persistent Jamaican whore, pay for his drink, and collect his raincoat. All this without arousing undue attention. They were an incompetent bunch. Just like the CII.

During his quiet stroll through the fog, he had decided how he would play this thing with Amazing Grace. There were two possibilities. On the one hand, Strange might only have her try to sound him out—discover his reason for seeking him. In that case Jonathan would let Grace know that he was aware of the activities at The Cloisters and of the fact that Maximilian Strange wanted to contact him for some reason. He would tell her he was interested in anything that might prove profitable, if it was safe enough. On the other hand, Strange might have decided to send men to pick Jonathan up and bring him to The Cloisters. In this case it would be important not to seem eager to get inside. He would have to put up some resistance, enough to make it look good. He would have to hurt some of them, while he tried to avoid hurt to himself. Once inside The Cloisters, he would have to play it by ear. It would be a narrow thing.

Damn. If only he knew why Strange was trying to contact him.

He paused for a second beneath a streetlight to get his bearings back to the Cellar d'Or. The blind alley leading to the side entrance was only a block or two from here. There was a shuffling sound down the street, and he turned in time to see a figure jump from the pool of light two streetlamps away.

The blue raincoat. The last thing he needed was this MI–5 ass tagging along. It would make him appear to be bait, and he'd never talk his way out of that.

There was a second of elastic silence, then Jonathan heard another sound, borne on the fog from across the street. There were two more of them.

He ran.

He had only twenty-five yards on them as he broke into the blind mews behind the club and banged loudly at the back door. The noise echoed through the brick cavern, but there was no response. From the dustbins and garbage cans that littered the alley, he found a champagne bottle, which he clutched by the neck, thankful for the weight of the dimpled bottom as he pressed back into a shadowy niche behind a projecting corner of damp brick. The three figures appeared, strung out across the entrance of the alley. Backlit by a streetlight, their long shadows falling before them on the wet cobblestones, they looked like extras from a Carol Reed film. Jonathan could see their featureless silhouettes, mat black in a nimbus of silver phosphorescent fog. He remained motionless, his heart beating in his temples from the effort of his run and from anger at being endangered by these bungling government serfs.

They stopped halfway down the alley and exchanged some muttered words. One seemed to want to go away, another thought they should enter the Cellar d'Or and investigate. After a moment of vacillation, they decided to enter the club. Jonathan pressed back against the wall as they neared. Getting all three was going to be difficult. As they came abreast him, he brought the bottle down on the head of one with a satisfyingly solid crack. The other two jumped away, then rushed at him with well-schooled reactions. Hands clutched at him, a fist hit him on the shoulder; a shoe cracked into his shin. He jerked away with a broad backhand sweep with the bottle that made them dodge back for an instant. One grabbed up a bottle from a dustbin and hurled it. He ducked as it exploded into fragments behind him.

A shaft of light fell upon the scene as the door behind Jonathan opened and the dominating bulk of P'tit Noel filled the frame.

“Thank God,” Jonathan said.

Together they waded into the hooligans, and it was over in five seconds. Jonathan used his bottle on one; P'tit Noel struck the other with the flat palms of his open hands, loud concussing blows that splatted against his head and slammed him against the wall.

One of the men was still conscious, sitting against the brick wall, blood streaming from his nose and mouth where P'tit Noel's palm had flattened them. Another was moaning in semi-consciousness. The last was a silent heap among the garbage cans.

P'tit Noel dragged each up in turn by his lapels and held him against the wall with one hand while he opened the man's eyelids with his fingers, professionally checking the set and dilation of the pupils. “They'll live,” he said, as a matter of information.

“Pity.”

P'tit Noel wiped his palms on the shirt of one of the downed men. “Why don't you step in and brush yourself off, sir,” he said over his shoulder. “Mam'selle Grace will see you now.”

“What about these yahoos?”

“Oh, I think they will be gone by morning.”

P'tit Noel conducted Jonathan to his small living quarters behind the club and offered him the use of his bathroom to clean up. He wasn't really hurt. There was some stiffness in one shoulder, his trousers stuck to his shin where the kick had brought blood, and he was experiencing the mild nausea of adrenaline recession, but he would be fine. As he stepped from the bathroom, P'tit Noel greeted him with a glass of rum, hot and soothing going down.

“You took your time answering the door.”

“Actually, I did not hear you knock, sir.”

“Then how come you turned up? For which, by the way, much thanks.”

“Intuition. Premonition. As I told you, I am Haitian.”

“Voodoo and all?”

“You know voodoo, sir?”

“Not really. No.”

P'tit Noel smiled. “It exists. I passed some time studying the legal implications of crime committed under its influence. Because of the limits of my British education, I was prone to scoff at first.”

“Which limitations are those?”

“The limitations of logic and evidence. Of European sequential thought.”

“You were a student in Jamaica?”

“No, I was a lawyer, sir.”

Jonathan admired the cool way he laid that on him. “You know, P'tit Noel, you've developed a magnificent way of saying ‘sir.' When you use the word, it sounds like an arrogant insult.”

“Yes, I know, sir.”

         

P'tit Noel led him up a narrow staircase to the first floor where the ambience was that of the well-appointed town house—totally alien to the gaudy glitter of the club. They passed down a hallway and stopped before a double door of dark oak. P'tit Noel tapped lightly.

“I shall leave you now, sir. You may go in.”

Jonathan thanked him again for his intervention, opened the door, and stepped into a lavishly furnished room of crimson damask and Italian marble.

Grace was indeed amazing.

She stood in the middle of the room, wearing a transparent peignoir of a white diaphanous material. Poised, her fine body was even more seductive when covered with a mist of fabric through which the circles of her brown nipples and the triangle of her écu were a dim freehand geometry. But it was her stature that gave Jonathan pause. Little wonder the marble mantel in the photograph had seemed uncommonly high. Amazing Grace was only four feet six inches tall.

“Good evening, Grace,” he said, settling his smiling gaze on her large oriental eyes.

Her nose wrinkled up and she laughed hoarsely. “Well, you handled that just fine, Dr. Hemlock.”

“I'm unflappable. Particularly when I'm stunned.”

“Is that so.” She turned away and walked over the thick red carpet toward a little grouping of furniture before the fireplace. The splayed toes of her bare feet seemed to grip the rug. “Don't just stand there, boy. Come on over here and have a drink with me.” She lifted a decanter of clear liquid and filled two sherry glasses, then she arranged herself on a small chaise longue, taking up all the space in an unprovocative way that denied the possibility of his joining her on it.

He took his glass and sat across from her and near the crackling wood fire.

“Happy times,” she said, lifting her glass and draining it.

“Cheers.” He swallowed—then he swallowed again several times to get it down. His eyes were damp and his voice thin when he spoke. “You drink neat Everclear?”

“Honey bun, I don't drink for flavor.”

“I see.” Jonathan had been surprised by her accent from the first. He had assumed that she, like her staff, was West Indian. But she was American.

“Omaha,” she explained.

“You're kidding.”

“Sweety, people don't kid about coming from Omaha. That's like bragging about having syphilis. Pour yourself another.”

“No. No—thank you. It's
good
. But no thank you.”

She laughed again, a rich brawling sound that was infectious. “Hey, tell me. No shit now. How can a swinging type like you be a doctor? You don't look like you'd waste time jamming nurses behind screens.”

“I'm not that kind of doctor. What about yourself? How did you end up in the flesh trade?”

“Oh, just answered an advertisement. ‘Positions wanted.'” She hooted a laugh. “But seriously, I did a couple years in Vegas working at a joint that specialized in uncommon meat. My being tiny makes tiny men feel big. Then I decided that management was more fun than labor, so I saved up my money and . . .” She made an inclusive sweep of her hand.

“It looks like you're doing very well.”

“I'll probably make it through the winter.” Instantly the shine in her eyes dimmed. “Is that enough?”

“Enough?”

“Small talk, honey bun.”

Jonathan smiled. “Almost. One more question. P'tit Noel. Is he your lover? I only ask out of a sense of self-preservation.”

“Are you kidding, man? I mean, he's nuts about me and all, that goes without saying. I imagine he'd eat half a mile of my shit just to see where it came from. But we don't fuck. I'm a little girl, and he is a big man. He'd puncture my lungs.”

The flood of earthy imagery made Jonathan laugh.

“Besides,” she continued, refilling her glass, “I don't use men anymore. When I need it, I have a girl in. Women know where the bits are and what they want. They're more efficient.”

“Like the Everclear.”

“Right.”

He shook his head. “You're amazing, Grace.”

She drank off half the glass. “So? What did you want to see me about?”

“I want to see Maximilian Strange.”

“Why?”

“I believe he wants to see me.”

“Why?”

“I'll ask him when I see him.”

“What brought you here?”

Jonathan sighed. “Please, lady. That will slow us down a lot.”

“All right. No peekaboo. Tell me why you want to see Max. We're partners. Or didn't you know that?”

Jonathan's eyebrows raised. “Partners?
Equal
partners?”

She finished her drink and poured another. “No, Max doesn't have any equals. He's one of a kind. The most beautiful man; the most cruel man. He holds all the patents on excitement.”

“It sounds like you feel about Strange the way P'tit Noel feels about you.”

“That's not far wrong.”

Jonathan rose and looked around. “Grace? There's something I want to do. And you can help me.”

“Yeah?”

“I've got this problem. How can I tell you this without offending you? Honey, I've got to piss.”

“Nut!” She laughed. “It's back there. Through the bedroom.”

When he returned she had taken off her peignoir and was standing with her back to the fire, rubbing her bare buttocks and stretching to her tiptoes in the warmth.

“Do you know that you're nude, madam?”

“I like to walk around bare-assed. I feel free. And it turns men on, and I get a kick out of that. 'Cause they ain't going to get nothin'.” She said this last in a low-down Ras accent.

“Well, you keep flashing that fine body around, you'll get yourself raped one of these days.”

“By you?” she asked with taunting scorn.

“No, I've given up rape. The pillow talk is too limited.”

She frowned seriously. “You know, if some stud decided to rape me, I don't think I'd fight it. I'd let him in. Then I'd tighten up the old sphincter and cut it right off.”

“What a lesson that would be for him.” But her taut, cabled muscles under smooth skin gave the image credibility, and he couldn't help a quick local wince.