Blood Is Dirt (32 page)

I headed for the lobby but a light toot from a Mercedes 190 with its engine running stopped me. Gale was listening to the radio with the air con on and doing some concentrated smoking. I got in next to her. She was wearing a cream cotton strappy minidress with no bra. Her nipples had hardened against the material in the cold of the car.

‘I should do this more often,' she said. ‘It's been a blast for my confidence. I had guys hitting on me nonstop in that lobby. Three offers for “champagne in my room”. I mean, shit, that's not bad for a little old housewife. Jesus, Bruce, you look like something Gray's cat honks up once in a while.'

‘When you've put the strychnine in its food?'

‘You're full of ideas.'

‘Yeah, and this is the best I've been feeling all day.'

‘You be careful. You don't wanna end up round somebody's roses.'

‘It's the closest I'll get to being in a bed of them.'

‘Hard day at the office?'

‘A zinger.'

‘So what'd you make me drag my ass out here for?'

I tapped the steering wheel with the floppy.

‘A three-and-a-half-inch floppy, wow. You haven't gone and pirated your latest computer game for me, have you, Bruce?'

‘You show this to Roberto Franconelli and he'll take a couple of rubber truncheons and beat a tattoo on Graydon's testicles until they're the size of pumpkins.'

‘That sounds a little strong for my purposes,' she said. ‘Graydon's an asshole but I don't want him killed. You got anything fluffier?'

‘Graydon's not going to part with ten million dollars for a soufflé.'

‘I was thinking more sponge less hardtack.'

‘Then you'll have to kiss Roberto's ass and make him see that maybe Graydon's been a little out of line and should get his knuckles rapped. That maybe he should pay a little fine to his wife and give the capo back what he's ripped off plus interest.'

‘You're sounding a little pissed.'

‘If you had balls and they were in the vice mine are in, you would be too.'

‘I'm not sure about this, Bruce. This is sounding kinda...'

‘I'm going to Franconelli's with this floppy. You can come with me and plead for Graydon's ass or you can let me fly and watch Graydon get weaved through a cattle grid. Let's go and make a phone call.'

‘You mean
now?'

‘It's tough being pushed around. Believe me, I know.'

‘But
I
didn't push you around.'

‘No, but it's my turn now, and I've chosen you.'

We got out of the car and walked to the lobby. Gale put a call through to the Franconelli household. He wasn't up. Carlo didn't want to wake him. Gale held the phone in a limp wrist and gave me the ‘too bad' look. I tore the phone out of her hand.

‘Carlo, this is Bruce Medway. Gale and I want to talk to Mr Franconelli. It's inconvenient, I know, but tell him there's a life involved. Tell him it's Selina Aguia's life. Right? You understand?
Capice,
or whatever you guys say?'

I held the line for a good seven minutes. Gale smoked two cigarettes and took the nails of one hand down to the half moons. Carlo came back on and told us to come up straight away.

I followed Gale to Roberto's house. It was in a secure street similar to the Strudwicks'. Carlo had phoned down to the guards to admit our two cars. We drove through the steel gates and up through the usual heavy-security situation to the house.

The house was a square block, a bunker that looked as if it had the strength to take another ten floors on top. The windows were all barred and shuttered. The front door was steel with shipyard rivets and no knocker. Carlo met us and took us upstairs to Franconelli's office.

Roberto was sitting on the corner of his desk clipping the end off a cigar. He was wearing blue silk pyjamas, a yellow silk dressing gown and black velvet slippers with gold crests on the toes.

There were two other guys sitting on a low black leather sofa. They had guns clipped to their belts. They propped their faces up with their fists, stretching their mouths to the size of mental patients'. Carlo shut the door behind us. Franconelli lit his Havana with an extra-long match.

‘All of you wait outside for a few minutes. I want to talk to Mr Medway alone,' he said, and blew out the match with smoke from his mouth.

The door closed behind them.

‘You drinking tonight?' he asked.

I nodded.

‘Grappa? It's all I got up here. The whisky's down.'

‘Grappa's fine.'

‘Before we talk business,' he said, uncorking the grappa, ‘I want to ask you something.'

He poured the drinks in small shot glasses. We saluted each other.

‘What did Selina tell you about me?' he asked.

‘That I should even think of coming to your house at this time of night asking for help?'

‘She tell you I was soft on her?'

‘She said you were interested.'

‘Just interested?'

‘She said you might be in love with her. But she's still young, Mr Franconelli. Maybe she was mistaken.'

‘No, she wasn't,' he said, and walked behind his desk and sat in the leather scoop chair in front of his PC. ‘She tell you about my wife and daughter?'

I nodded. He smoked at the ceiling for a few moments.

‘I look at you, Mr Medway, and I can see that there's something going on. You've got a life going on. There's something burning, something pushing you. I've looked at myself these last four years, more the last year, and I see nothing but a dead man. I smoke, I drink, I eat, I do business. Nothing more. Then I meet Selina and I find what's been missing. But you're right. Carlo's right. She's young. She's younger than my daughter. I don't want to make a fool of myself. I want you to tell me if I'm making a fool of myself. You understand what I'm asking?'

‘Carlo doesn't like Selina?' I asked, trying to smooth myself out for the lie that was coming.

‘He's afraid for me, I think.'

‘Well,' I said. ‘As far as I know you're not making a fool of yourself.'

‘That's good,' he said, looking pleased. ‘Now we can talk business.'

He pressed a button under the lip of his desk. The others filed in and took seats. There were just about enough for all of us in the room. Franconelli poured a grappa for Gale. Carlo and the boys sat dead-eyed.

‘Where's Selina?' Franconelli asked me.

‘Chief Babba Seko's house.'

‘You said she's in trouble. Why?'

‘Because of this,' I said, and threw the floppy on the desk.

He turned on his computer. Opened a drawer and took out a pair of heavy-rimmed specs. He checked the floppy for details of the programme and copied it on to his hard disk. The BASOLCO accounts came up on to the screen.

‘I have these same accounts. You going to tell me what it means?'

I told Franconelli what Graydon and the chief had been doing since his wife had died, since they'd seen him getting distracted, since they'd seen him starting to go down.

There was an extraordinary physical change in the man. Before he'd looked human, the blood slick around his veins, his face heavy but impassive, his eyes shrewd but compassionate. Now it was as if I could see the arteries narrowing, the blood thickening, the pressure rising. His arms and pectorals shook. His carotid popped out in his neck. The pressured blood began to do strange things to his face—purpling it, darkening it. The purity of his anger left him with a white rim to his mouth, a thin white line around his liverish lips. He blinked at the heat coming off his eyeballs.

‘Now, Roberto...' started Gale. I held up a hand.

The young men on the sofa tensed. A half smile appeared on Carlo's face and he stretched his neck as if his collar was chafing. Franconelli stormed around the room, torrential Italian pouring out of him as if he was an actor rehearsing lines for an opera. Carlo followed him with approving eyes, his body still. Franconelli's fist was opening and closing as if he was pumping his own, thick, enraged blood around his body. He stopped in front of me.

‘Why'd she do this?'

‘I think you asked her to, Mr Franconelli.'

‘I asked her. I tell her to tell me to... fucking language.
Non parla Italiano?'

‘No.'

‘I told her to look at the oil. That's all.'

‘I don't think you did.'

‘And you!' he roared, turning on Gale. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?'

‘She's come here to ask for leniency.'

‘You come here to plead for your husband's ass?'

‘I've come here to beg you, Roberto,' said Gale, catching hold of the tempo fast.

‘Beg me for what? Not to kill that fucking bastard husband of yours?'

‘I know...'

‘Gale is part of the reason Selina broke into the chief's system.'

‘Why?'

‘She's sick of Graydon...'

‘She's sick? I'm sick. Graydon. Fucking man,' said Franconelli, using his fingers to show us that Graydon liked to stick himself with needles and pump himself up.

‘Gale asked us to find information on Graydon so that she could leave him. She can't live with a man like that.'

‘No. Nobody can live with a man like that,' he muttered. He spoke in Italian to Carlo who stood up and walked over to Gale.

‘Bring him here, now.'

‘Roberto,' said Gale, standing up, ‘don't kill him. I'm begging you not to kill him.'

‘I give you my word,' he said, ‘I won't kill him.' They left the room. ‘What does she want?'

‘She wants enough money to be able to leave him.'

‘Like how much?'

‘Ten million dollars.'

‘You know, that
stronzzo,
he could give five times that and it would be nothing.'

‘Selina's situation is more complicated,' I said, wanting to get out of here, away from these people. ‘I was sent this package today.'

I threw the polystyrene block on to the desk. Franconelli looked at it. His body stilled. He made a decent show of opening the box but I knew, at that moment, that it was his. He had sent the box. He knew what was inside.

‘What is it?' he asked, but I wasn't convinced.

‘It's the mouth of a man called Napier Briggs.'

‘Who is he?' he asked, and that was enough for me. Franconelli knew Briggs better than his own aunt.

I told him how Napier Briggs had been found and waited to see if he would keep the lie going.

‘And what does this have to do with Selina?'

‘Briggs was making himself dangerous to the chief, so they killed him. Now they're threatening me. They're holding Selina and threatening me to make sure things go smoothly.'

‘What things go smoothly?'

Now I knew why Franconelli had sent the package. He was listening to me with every cell of his body. Right down to the dead skin on the back of his heels he was listening to me. He wanted to know what was going on. He knew there was something and that it was important but he didn't know what. He'd thrown Napier's mouth into the works to raise some information. Franconelli straightened himself as if he'd realized he was looking as hunched as a toad.

‘She's arranged for him to buy six and a half kilos of Plutonium 239, ten kilos of red mercury and a half kilo of Californium 252.'

‘She's selling him a
bomb?

‘Just the ingredients.'

‘Has she gone crazy?'

‘She'd planned it so that the chief would lose some money. Something has gone wrong. Now the chief is threatening. I need your help to get her out.'

‘Why does she want to cheat him?'

‘You should ask her that yourself. I'm the paid help. She doesn't tell me everything.'

‘What are you doing with her?'

He knew who I was and what I'd been doing. If I wanted his help I had to keep my mouth shut. Franconelli leaned over the desk at me, looming dark and turbulent like the coming rainy season.

‘I'm helping her.'

‘Why?'

‘She's paying me.'

‘You don't look like the kind of man to sell nuclear bombs to people.'

‘I'm poor. She said he wouldn't end up with any product. Now it's out of control and I need your help.'

It had been his mistake to make out that he didn't know Napier Briggs. Now he couldn't ask the question he wanted to ask without looking a fool and Roberto Franconelli was not in the business of looking foolish.

‘Chief Babba Seko,' said Franconelli, pushing himself back off the desk, ‘is a man who is coming to his moment.'

I told him about the proposed exchange at Ben's brother's warehouse in Cotonou.

‘Carlo'll go with you when he comes back. You show him the warehouse,' he said, and wrote down some numbers. ‘You call me when you're fixed up.'

‘How can I guarantee that the chief will come with Selina?'

‘You
make
him come,' he said. ‘Where's the money?'

‘With me.'

‘Recognize your strengths, my friend. You're the principal now. Lay down your conditions for the exchange. Who's supplying?'

‘A Russian. But the goods will come via me.'

‘Then you're the one in control. Tell him he
has
to be there.'

‘He'll be suspicious. He'll know I'm trying to get Selina out. The exchange is only for the first half of the product.'

‘Why?'

‘The Russian wants it that way.'

‘Let him be suspicious. He'll bring his men to the warehouse. But maybe he's made a mistake doing the business in Cotonou. He's got a private army here. He'll only have maybe six to ten men there.'

‘He said Nigeria's too dangerous at the moment.'

‘True,' he said, and sat at his desk again. ‘So, you tell him what you want. We'll wait for your call. The rest is for us.'