I took a stool where I had a good view, not just of the screen but the rest of the room as well, and shook my head when the barman asked what he could get me.
“I’ll stick to coffee,” I said, indicating my cup. The painkillers I was taking made my approach to alcohol still cautious.
In the mirror, I saw Cadillac man saunter in and take up station further along the bar. As he passed, he glanced at my back a couple of times as if sizing me up, with all the finesse of a hard-bitten hill farmer checking out a promising young ewe. I kept my attention firmly on the motorcycle racing.
After a minute or so of waiting for me to look over so he could launch into seductive dialogue, he signalled the barman. I ignored their muttered conversation until a snifter of brandy was put down in front of me with a solemn flourish.
I did look over then, received a smug salute from Cadillac man’s own glass. I smiled — at the barman. “I’m sorry,” I said to him. “But I’m teetotal at the moment.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the barman said with a twinkle, and whisked the offending glass away again.
“Hey, that’s my kind of girl,” Cadillac man called over, when the barman relayed the message. Surprise made me glance at him and he took that as invitation to slide three stools closer, so only one separated us. His hot little piggy eyes fingered their way over my body. “Beautiful and cheap to keep, huh?”
“Good coffee’s thirty bucks a pound,” I said, voice as neutral as I could manage.
His gaze cast about for another subject. “You not bored with this?” he asked, jerking his head at the TV. “I could get him to switch channels.”
I allowed a tight smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “Neil Hodgson’s just lapped Daytona in under one-minute thirty-eight,” I said. “How could I be bored?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dwayne’s head lift and turn as the sound of Cadillac man’s voice finally penetrated. It was like watching a slow-waking bear.
“So, honey, if I can’t buy you a drink,” Cadillac man said with his most sophisticated leer, “can I buy you breakfast?”
I flicked my eyes towards the barman in the universal distress signal. By the promptness of his arrival, he’d been expecting my call.
“Is this guy bothering you?” he asked, flexing his muscles.
“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “He is.”
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”
Cadillac man gaped between us for a moment, then flounced out, muttering what sounded like “frigid bitch” under his breath.
After very little delay, Dwayne staggered to his feet and went determinedly after him.
Without haste, I finished my coffee. The racing reached an ad break. I checked my watch, left a tip, and headed back out into the mild evening air towards my chalet. My left leg ached equally from the day’s activity and the evening’s rest.
I heard the raised voices before I saw them in the gathering gloom, caught the familiar echoing smack of bone on muscle.
Dwayne had run his quarry to ground in the space between the soft-top Cadillac and my Buell, and was venting his alcohol-fuelled anger in traditional style, with his fists. Judging by the state of him, Cadillac man was only lethal behind the wheel of a car.
On his knees, one eye already closing, he caught sight of me and yelled, “Help, for Chrissake!”
I unlocked the door to my chalet, crossed to the phone by the bed.
“Your maintenance man is beating seven bells out of one of your guests down here,” I said sedately, when front desk answered. “You might want to send someone.”
Outside again, Cadillac man was going down for the third time, nose streaming blood. I noted with alarm that he’d dropped seriously close to my sparkling new Buell.
I started forwards, just as Dwayne loosed a mighty roundhouse that glanced off Cadillac man’s cheekbone and deflected into the Buell’s left-hand mirror. The bike swayed perilously on its stand and I heard the musical note of splintered glass dropping.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Dwayne glanced up and instantly dismissed me as a threat, moved in for the kill.
OK. Now I’m pissed off.
Heedless of my bad leg, I reached them in three fast strides and stamped down on to the outside of Dwayne’s right knee, hearing the cartilage and the anterior cruciate ligament pop as the joint dislocated. Regardless of how much muscle you’re carrying, the knee is always vulnerable.
Dwayne crashed, bellowing, but was too drunk or too stupid to know it was all over. He swung for me. I reached under my jacket and took the SIG 9mm off my hip and pointed it at him, so the muzzle loomed large near the bridge of his nose.
“Don’t,” I murmured.
And that was how, a few moments later, we were found by Tanya, and the woman from reception, and the barman.
“You a cop?” Cadillac man asked, voice thick because of the stuffed nose.
“No,” I said. “I work in close protection. I’m a bodyguard.”
He absorbed that in puzzled silence. We were back in the bar until the police arrived. Out in the lobby I could hear Dwayne still shouting at the pain, and Tanya shouting at what she thought of his stupid jealous temper. He was having a thoroughly bad night.
“A bodyguard,” Cadillac man mumbled blankly. “So why the fuck did you let him beat the crap out of me back there?”
“Because you deserved it,” I said, rubbing my leg and wishing I’d gone for my Vicodin before I’d broken up the fight. “I thought it would be a valuable life lesson — thou shalt not be a total dickhead.”
“Jesus, honey! And all the time, you had a gun? I can’t believe you just let him—”
I sighed. “What do you do?”
“Do?”
“Yeah. For a living.”
He shrugged gingerly, as much as the cracked ribs would let him. “I sell Cadillacs,” he said. “The finest motorcar money can buy.”
“Spare me,” I said. “So, if you saw a guy broken down by the side of the road, you’d just stop and give him a car, would you?”
“Well,” Cadillac man said, frowning, “I guess, if he was a pal—”
“What if he was a complete stranger who’d behaved like a prat from the moment you set eyes on him?” I queried. He didn’t answer. I stood, flipped my jacket to make sure it covered the gun. “I don’t expect you to work for free. Don’t expect me to, either.”
His glance was sickly cynical. “Some bodyguard, huh?”
“Yeah, well,” I tossed back, thinking of the Buell with its smashed mirror and wondering who was in for seven years of bad luck. “I’m off duty.”
Guns of Brixton
Paul D. Brazill
1
“White and red, Richard!” said Caroline Sanderson as she lay on her massive four-poster bed massaging her temples. She did this at the start of each day, saying that it helped her focus, as if White House level decisions awaited her. She propped herself up on her elbows and exhaled deeply.
“But, whatever you do, don’t buy bloody Chardonnay. Everybody hates Chardonnay now, you know? It’s so unfashionable,” she continued. “Remember, okay?”
Richard resisted the temptation to ask her how, pray tell, a human’s taste buds could be affected by the fickle whims of what was considered fashionable but he knew from experience that he’d be pissing in the wind.
Caroline was in a planet far, far away from him these days. And all the better for it. Her voice was starting to sound like a squeaking gate or a leaky tap dripping throughout a sleepless night.