A homeless guy put his hand in front of one of the doors, delaying the close, and Sebastian managed to slip inside in the nick of time.
“Thank you, squire,” he said. If he’d had some American coins he would’ve tipped the kind fellow, but he didn’t. He settled for shaking the man’s hand, a gesture neither of them enjoyed very much.
He rode the subway into Manhattan, proud of his ingenuity. He was a cunning ol’ chappie, wasn’t he?
It had been ages since he’d been to the city and he was planning to check into his usual room at the Mansfield – those kind fellows always gave him the top floor suite – and then take in some of the sights. He could do with some good food as well. There was a Brazilian restaurant in midtown he quite liked where the maitre d’ was a good sport and always gave him the best table in the place and, oh yes, free drinks. He didn’t know what they put in those bloody drinks but the last time he’d gone there he’d left so drunk he’d fallen over a pile of garbage on the curb and not gotten up for the better part of an hour.
At the Fifty-ninth Street stop, Sebastian disembarked and was about to climb the stairs when he heard, “Where you think you going, Brit boy?”
He thought he must be hallucinating but he turned around and sure enough Yanni was there. The bloody hell?
Covering his anguish with a sarcastic grin, Sebastian said, “I was just going for a bit of a stroll, care to join me?”
Back in captivity, or Queens, Sebastian spent days watching reruns of The Odd Couple and drinking that thick treacle they called coffee. The only thing that made it at all palatable was if you put a nip of Metaxa in it. And Heavens to Betsy, the Greeks might be a pain in the arse, no slur on their homoerotic heritage, but they sure did keep an awful lot of booze in the house.
Another saving grace: One of the women of the house, Irini, had that dark sultry look, the doe-brown eyes and one of those lush Greek figures that so quickly ran to fat but until then was simmering hot. Her English was almost American, with only a slight Greek inflection. She was forever cleaning and each time he got a buzz building, giggling away at Oscar and Felix, there she’d be, telling – not asking, mind, telling – him to move his big English legs out of the way. The drinks, the reruns, and Irina helped him keep his mind off his situation.
Which was looking worse each day. The men were pulling out all the stops to find Angela, but so far had found nothing, zilch, tipota. Like she’d vanished off the island of Manhattan, assuming she’d actually made it there in the first place. And Yanni’s brood were seriously pissed. The Greek network was good and they prided themselves on tracking any Greek, anywhere, but it wasn’t happening. And Sebastian was worried all that anger would wind up being let out in his direction someday soon.
Irini, hands on her hips, her wedding band shining, asked Sebastian, “Why you no help the men, you sit here all day, doing nothing?”
But he spotted a slight sheen of moisture above her lip and realized, this filly wanted rogering, a tad of the old Billy Bunter. And by golly, he was the chap to do it.
He said, “I could find her in five minutes.”
Her eyes widened, and she asked, looking a bit like a mare in heat, “How?’
He gestured around the cramped living room, said, “They keep me a virtual prisoner, if I had access to a laptop, I’d have her tracked in no time.”
She said, “I have a laptop. For my studies.”
He wondered if there was a course in sweeping.
She lowered her eyes demurely, said, “It is in my bedroom.”
He rose languidly. Sebastian tried never to do anything in a hurry unless it was… flee.
He said, “Show me what you’ve got.”
Her room was filled with talismans – the evil eye, a mega statue of Makarios – and lo and fucking behold, in the middle of all this devotion, a poster of Guns N’ Roses.
That was all she wrote. He rode her on the flokati rug and get this, the bitch bit him, twice, till he asked in his best Brit tone, “Try not to bite the merchandise.”
Afterwards, still sweaty and naked, he opened the laptop and got Google to work its dark magic. His one idea was to find an address for Angela’s ex, that Max Fisher bloke she’d complained about so much. Instead, he read about Fisher’s bloody arrest. He was simply appalled to discover that Fisher had been a drug dealer. What sort of man had Angela been associating herself with? As if there had been any doubt, he was certain now he’d been the classiest lay she’d ever had.
But arrested, this wasn’t good at all. He’d been hoping Fisher could help them find Angela. How could he help them from a jail cell in Attica?
But then he thought, who knows. That Hannibal Lecter chap had been able to help Jodie Foster from his jail cell in that movie, the Lambs one. Maybe this Fisher could be of at least some use.
When you’ve only got one straw, you grasp at it.
One article from the New York Post gave the address where Fisher was serving his sentence; that not only meant Sebastian knew where to find him, it also meant Angela knew. He’d have laid stiff odds that she had paid him at least one visit there, and who knows, maybe she’d come more than once. Maybe he’d know where she was and could steer them to her.
Sebastian was downright proud of his ingenuity. A bloody Sherlock Holmes, he was. It would have taken the Greeks, what, five years to come up with this angle?
Irini gave him a cold Amstel and, by golly, it was good. She said, “You must be quick.”
He winked at her, said, “You sang a different tune on the rug.”
She said, “If Marko comes home, he will cut your balls off.”
He got right on it.
Sixteen
“The man who shoots people in the legs for effect, thinks that I might have been unnecessarily violent?”
First thing Sino was gonna do when he got out – come at that bandajo Max Fisher hard. His two weeks in the hole, he been thinking about that shit all the time, thinking of different ways to make the man feel pain.
Fuckin’ Fisher. Sino shoulda taken his gorda ass out himself, made a mistake out saucering that shit to that puta Carlito. You can’t trust a Mexican to do nothing ’cept make burritos and even then, check out all the PR’s they hire at Taco Bell.
Fourteen dias in the hole and it didn’t break Sino at all. Made him stronger, more duro. He spent the time workin’ out down there, doin’ a thousand push-ups a day, and thinkin’ maybe he do Fisher with his hands. Take his time with it, maybe start in on his face, to hear some bones breakin’, that was always a lot of fun. Fisher, the bandajo , would be screamin’ and beggin’, and that’d only get Sino goin’ more. Maybe he’d break his arms, then his legs, all the bones in his body one by one, till he was one big pile of maricon bones. But he’d still be alive ’cause, yeah, that’s what Sino wanted, to make the man stay alive, to keep feeling pain.
Or, maybe he should burn Fisher’s ass? Yeah, seeing a man die in fuera was like a fuckin’ fiesta.
Wait, hold up, Sino had a better way to do it. He’d get a shank and cut him up real good. Name’s Fisher, right? So Sino gonna cut him up like a fish. Do it nice and slow too. Little cuts first, make the man see some blood, then get in deeper, make him see some real blood. He’d cut his whole body up but save the best part for last. Man say he cut a man’s dick off, like to talk about it all the time? Maybe Sino gonna cut off Fisher’s dick, feed it to him, then kill him.
Make that bandajo wish he never took that pie from Sino.