Noel ground the muzzle of his pistol into Mollie’s temple. “Now, Mollie, you’re going to open a doorway to the warehouse in Kongoville. And you, Mr. Steunenberg, you and your uninjured son are going to move these pallets through that doorway because if you don’t I’m going to kill Mollie. Then I’m going to hunt you down and kill you too, and that means your other two sons will die because you won’t be able to call for an ambulance.”
“My wife… my wife will be calling the police. They’ll be here real soon.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Because the last thing you would want is the police coming around, and you having to explain how you have all these pallets of gold ingots.” Another twist of the gun brought a whimper from Mollie. “Now make up your mind. I’m not a patient person, and you’re interfering with my plans.”
The man looked from his suffering sons to his daughter trapped in the curve of Noel’s arm. Noel loosened his grip on her throat. “Mollie, help your daddy make up his mind.”
“Daddy, we need to do what he says.”
“Good girl,” Noel said, and patted her cheek with the barrel of the gun.
Steunenberg gave a short, curt nod. One of Mollie’s fourth-dimensional doors opened in the center of the barn. Steunenberg and his son pushed the still-floating pallets through the doorway. This time Noel saw the familiar outline of the warehouse they had rented lit by work lights. Once all the gold was back in Africa Noel pulled Mollie through. Mathias followed.
“You gotta let her go,” her father called out desperately.
“In time.”
Central Park
Manhattan, New York
It was snowing. Not hard, but steady. Dots of white no bigger than a pinhead drifting down from the occluded New York sky. Bugsy and Simoon walked along the twisting pathways of Central Park, the world white and grey around them. He was trying not to touch her. Snuggling up right now would have been a lie.
“So no word yet,” Simoon said.
“No. Not yet. Jayewardene’s fighting it out with the bigwigs of the global internationalist conspiracy or, you know, whoever. He’ll get an answer pretty soon.”
“I wish there was a way to get past the Radical and talk to Mark Meadows, you know?” Simoon said.
“I wish there was a way to kick his fucking ass,” Bugsy said, his tone light and conversational. “It freaks me out how everything we do in this country is about what happened in 1968. It’s not just Meadows, it’s everyone. It’s the Vietnam war and the Summer of Love. It’s Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and Thomas Marion Douglas, who was, by the way, an arrogant dick. I met him.”
“I know you did,” Simoon said. A dog bounded through the snow, barked at them once, and bounded away.
“I look at all the shit that’s going on now. The Nshombos. Kid aces, I mean holy shit, that’s creepy. And the Sudd. And New Orleans. And Egypt and the Nur before that. That seems like plenty enough without hauling along three decades of old business. It just… it pisses me off. It just pisses me off.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Simoon said. “I mean, if you don’t want to.” She stopped and sat on a stone bench. Her breath was a mist. A fog. A ghost.
“Do what?” Bugsy said.
“Get all worked up and angry,” she said, looking up from under Ellen’s lashes. “I get it. I do. You’re breaking up with me, right?”
Bugsy’s heart stilled and sank into his belly. He looked at his shoes. He sat. She was crying.
“It’s not going to work,” he said. “You’re great. And Ellen’s good folks. Nick… well, given that I’m sorta kinda sleeping with his girlfriend, I guess he’s taken it all pretty well. But this… Aliyah, this is nuts.”
“I don’t know,” she said between sobs. “Did I… do something wrong? Was I…”
Jonathan took a deep breath. Oh, this sucked. “You died. Years ago. In Egypt.”
“I don’t even remember that,” Simoon said.
“I do. And here’s the thing, if we were just fuck buddies, hanging out, having that post-AIDS hookup culture casual it-is-what-it-is thing? To begin with, you would never have gone for me. You traded down when you found me, and I love you for it, but we both know that’s true. And another thing, you’d have ditched me by now. Or I’d have ditched you. We’d have had coffee some night, agreed that we’d be in touch about next weekend, only really weekend after next, and we’d both never follow up.”
“That isn’t true,” Simoon said in a voice that meant she knew it was.
“So why are we together?” Bugsy went on. “Because you’re dead and don’t think you can do any better. And because I feel like I’m killing you if we break up.”
“Aren’t you?” she whispered.
“No. I’m not. Because you died years ago.”
“Convenient,” Simoon said bitterly. “Really nice and simple and convenient for you, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it really sucks. But look. It was talk to you about it like this or else just tell Ellen to never put the earring back in. And I did it this way.”
“Why?” she said. “So you could hurt the girl a little more before you killed her?” She was talking about herself as if she were someone else. As if Ellen were speaking and not Simoon.
“So I could say good-bye before I let you go,” he said.
“You’re a fucking monster,” Simoon said softly. There were tears steaming on her cheeks. The snow around them was grey.
“Okay,” he said.
“This is really what you want?” Simoon said.
“Yeah.”
For a long moment, neither of them moved, and then with sudden violence, Simoon plucked out the earring and slammed it into his palm. By the time the metal touched him, Ellen was sitting beside him. Simoon was gone.
“Hey,” Bugsy said.
“I’m sorry,” Ellen said gently. “For what it’s worth, you were right. It couldn’t have gone any other way.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Its not like that for me and Nick, you know,” she said. “I couldn’t do what you did. I can’t walk away from him.”
“Okay,” Bugsy said.
They were quiet. The dog barked again, its voice muffled by distance and the fallen snow. Ellen patted him on the shoulder and stood. Simoon’s last tears had dried on her face, but Ellen only looked a little weary.
“Come by and pick up your things anytime you want, okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll do that,” Bugsy said.
Cameo nodded and turned away. He watched her walk, the thickening snow moving her away faster than mere distance could. She stopped, looked back. He could see the frown on her lips. When she called out, it was like a voice coming from a different world.
“You aren’t a monster,” she yelled. Bugsy raised a hand in thanks, and Cameo nodded and went back to her walk. To her apartment. To Nick the Hat and wherever that weird little psychodrama was leading. But without him.
He sat for a while, letting the chill sink deep into his bones. A jogger huffed by, wrapped in a turquoise track suit, white iPod cords dangling from his ears. A siren rose and fell and faded in the distance. Bugsy opened his hand.
It was a nice enough earring. Not spectacular, not cheap. Inoffensive. He tossed it up and down a couple times, measuring its weight by the impact against his palm, then stood, walked to the edge of the path, and launched it out into the snow. He didn’t see where it fell.
Afterward, he treated himself to a bookstore and some coffee.
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“I know he’s in the Sudd, but get the word to Weathers somehow,” Noel instructed Sun. “The gold will be in place in a few minutes.” He hung up his phone.
“What do we do about Jaako’s share?” Mathias asked as he loaded his share of the gold into suitcases.
Noel shrugged. “Well, it’s not like he had a widow or orphans to care for. Divide it equally between us.”
“And what about me?” Mollie muttered. Noel had tied her to a support pillar in the warehouse.
He squatted down in front of her. “Mollie, my dear, you have the necessary instincts for a life of crime, but you have to learn one key lesson. Never betray your associates. Unless you’re clever or lucky enough to kill them all you will find yourself… well, in your current situation.”