The Looters (24 page)

“Did you know the Moors, whom the Spanish finally defeated and drove out five hundred years ago, were a mixture of North African Arab, Berber, and Iberian culture?”

“No.”

“Most Americans probably think of places like Morocco, Libya, and Egypt as Middle Eastern rather than African for a good reason—their religion, language, and much of their culture came from the Middle East. Toward the end of the Islamic presence on the peninsula, Malaga was a Moorish kingdom ruled by an emir who called it a terrestrial paradise.”

“Sounds like I’m in a history class. You know a lot about Malaga.”

I opened my bag and held up my tour book. “The source of genius. I bought it at the last gas station.”

He shook his head. “And I thought you were just plain smart. ¿Habla español?”

“Sí, senor. I’m a little rusty, but I can get along. I took it in high school and spent a month studying the Chichen Itza site in the Yucatan during graduate school. ¿Habla usted español?”

“Muy poco. With mucho malo grammar. I spent two years at the Navy base in San Diego and all my off-duty time in Tijuana. The beer was cheap, and there were plenty of women to go around. I guess I picked up some of the language by osmosis. How big does your guidebook say Malaga is?”

“Half a million in town, twice that many in the metro area.”

“That’s manageable. I’d say hire a detective and have him and his pals start calling rental agencies. I can check out that while you pay a visit to the museum.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “The book says there’s one more thing you should know about Malaga.”

“What?”

“Two famous people were born there. Picasso and Antonio Banderas.”

“Just tell me about bars and beer.” He grinned. “Just kidding. I’m really an intellectual scholar under all this macho veneer. What does your book tell you about Barcelona?”

“Hans Christian Andersen called it the Paris of Spain.”

“You know what the people of Barcelona say?”

“Paris is the Barcelona of France?”

“How the hell did a smart woman like you get mixed up in something so stupid?”

I lowered my eyes and just stared at my hands. Everything had been going fine up to that point, but then my emotions took over. I didn’t have an answer for him. Tears suddenly welled in my eyes and I left the table and went to my room. I shut the door and locked it. I wanted to be alone to wallow in self-pity.

Coby knocked on my door a few minutes later.

Damn!
I wiped my eyes and opened the door.

“Okay, I’m not very diplomatic. That was stupid.”

“No, that was accurate.”

“I didn’t mean to attack your intelligence.”

“Smart people don’t do stupid things.”

“Yeah, sometimes they do. Hey, let’s go back to the bar and I’ll buy you a nightcap.”

“Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check. I’m tired.”

“Okay, if you want to talk, just knock on my door… or if you want to do anything else,” he smiled at me, “that’s fine with me, too.”

I broke out in a grin. “Good night, Coby.”

“See you tomorrow.”

I walked to the window and stared at the lights of the city below. I suddenly realized why I had insisted we stop before proceeding on to Malaga.

I was scared.

Chapter 37

Málaga

We arrived on the outskirts of Malaga late the following evening and checked into a hotel. A sense of dread had been gathering inside me. Was I foolish to find Milan and confront him? My logical mind was saying yes, but my instincts said no. I had to clear my name and he was the key. And I couldn’t rely on the police—not when I was the chief suspect.

“Too late to start inquiries about Milan,” I told Coby. “I want daylight and to be surrounded by a million people when I face this madman.”

“You may not have that option. Your pal doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who’s going to like crowds.”

“What about a bulletproof vest?”

“Won’t stop a shoulder-launched rocket. There’s only one sure way to deal with this guy… go home.”

The logical answer.

“Thanks. But I’m afraid Viktor Milan’s seen to it that I’d take up residence in a jail cell if I went home without giving the police the bastard—and the evidence to hang him.”

I had dragged my heels leaving Barcelona and slowed our pace. We could have arrived a couple hours earlier, but it still would have been too late to start a search. At least, that’s what I told myself.

The hotel we checked into was off the N331. For dinner I chose a tapas bar where we got a table in a dark corner. I wasn’t in a mood to display myself in the middle of a restaurant. It soon became obvious that confronting a savage killer didn’t affect Coby’s appetite. But by now we had become experts at ordering a la carte. He ordered vino tinto, a red table wine, and half a dozen tapas. I picked at mushrooms in garlic sauce and octopus in paprika sauce and wished I had a hamburger and fries… and to be a long ways from Spain’s Sun Coast.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Not very long ago, I wouldn’t think of being at sun, sea, and the beach without a tanned hunk with me. True, I had a tanned hunk with me, but…

“I’m getting cold feet about tackling a maniac who kills people with rockets.”

“You should be,” Coby said. “Try the lamb brochettes and the fried fish called pescaito frito. They’re both very good.”

“I’m happy that the fact I may be murdered tomorrow hasn’t ruined your appetite.”

He took a swig of wine, wiped his mouth, and grinned at me. “You’ll be murdered only over my dead body.”

I grabbed his hand. “Don’t talk like that.”

“Just hang tight. We’re going to get this guy for you.”

“Coby… all the courage and resolve when I ran to Zurich has drained out of me as I got closer to Malaga. I think it’s because I knew he wasn’t in Zurich, that I was there just to find out where he was. But I know he’s here. And I’m pretty sure he knows I’m here.”

“It’s a big city. You’re not going to run into him on the street. We’re going to hire a detective like you said, track him down.”

“What do we do then? Ask him to sign a confession? Or offer to buy him a ticket back to New York so he can turn himself in to the FBI?”

“Let’s see what he’s doing here. If he’s into anything dirty, we can get the Spanish police to bust him. You said he has a connection to the killings in London and a murder in New York. That’s probably enough for the locals to hold him until Scotland Yard and the FBI can question him.”

Was it that easy? Just see the guy and call the police? “But what if they arrest me instead?”

“Call from a pay phone on your way out of town.”

I stared into his penetrating eyes. “I like talking to you, Coby. You have simple answers to complicated questions. You should have been a psychologist. The kind that tells you to take five minutes and get your life into order.”

“Tell me your life story and I’ll tell you where you went wrong.”

“Tell me your life story first.”

He shrugged. “Did the surfing scene in California and Hawaii when I should have been hitting textbooks. Malibu women, margaritas, and thick, juicy waves. It was a great life until a shark took a bite out of my board and a small chunk of my thigh. But I had webfeet, so I became a SEAL.”

“Why didn’t you stick with it? Twenty years, pension check.”

“I loved being a SEAL. It was a blast. What I hated was all the rules and regulations that went with it. I couldn’t take the regimentation, so I jumped ship. I’ve been knocking around ever since.”

“Tell me the truth. Did you knock up the Dubai sheikh’s daughter?”

“Naw, she wasn’t stupid; she’d been down the road before. Many times. She told me she and her girlfriends fuck around all they like because they’re sent off to Switzerland to have their hymens reconstructed.”

I laughed and choked on my wine. “Hiram’s wife did that.”

“Angela St. John? She couldn’t pass for a virgin if she had her taco sewed shut.”

“She’s just tightening up to make herself more sexy. Certainly not for her husband. I think his main interest in sex was having a sexy wife.”

“All right, I told you my life story. It’s your turn.”

“Small-town girl. Poor but honest. Wanted to experience the big city. Wanted everything I’d seen in the movies. I learned many good things from my parents, especially one they taught me unconsciously. I thought my parents were big successes, but they weren’t. My mother and father held it against themselves because they never went for broke and they weren’t lucky enough to have their dreams realized through sheer luck or buying a lottery ticket. They went to their graves with a lot of ‘I wish I hads.’ So that’s my bottom-line objective in life. I don’t want to be on my deathbed, lying there lamenting, ‘Oh, shit, I wish I’d done that.’”

“So you go for broke. My analysis is that you’re too damn hard on your parents. We all have dreams and no one gets them all. I’m sure even Bill Gates has an I-wish-I’d-done-that or two. It’s okay if you just take it one day at a time and don’t fall into too many manholes.”

I saluted him with my glass. “There you go again, a brilliantly simple solution to all the problems in my life. You’re so right… it all comes down to staying away from manhole covers. I
was
proud of my parents. And I loved them very much. I wish they were here now. I’d be with them, crying my eyes out. They were the ones who had the hang-ups about who and what they were.”

The wine gave me a buzz. It also caused me to talk too much and to alibi about talking too much. “There’s a Latin phrase,
in vino veritas
. Means something like there’s truth in wine. Do you think I talk too much when I drink? That I’m spilling the beans? That liquor releases our inhibitions and brings out the truth?”

“Naw. Booze just makes honest people more honest.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”

“How beautiful, intelligent, and brave you are.”

“Liar. I can see your bedroom eyes. Right now they’re saying you want to have sex with me.”

“Well, I can’t deny that. I want that, too.”

“You’re just like the rest of them.”

“I know,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We think with our dicks, not our brains.”

“This may surprise you—”

“Nothing would surprise me about you anymore.”

“I used to arrange for sex in my business.” I leaned forward. “My boss made me do it.”

“You did it with your boss?”

“No, of course not. He was a swine. I did it for other people.”

“Did what?”

“Arranged sex.”

“You were a pimp?”

“Jesus, that’s an awful thing to say.”

“What else would you call someone who arranged sex for men—”

“And women.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Okay, what would you call it? A bi-pimp?”

“It’s called the art and antiquities trade. And it’s not for the faint of heart. If you look too close at a provenance, or if someone who’s willing to pay millions of dollars for a piece for your museum wants his ego or whatever else stroked, you do whatever it takes. Those are things they don’t teach you in an art history course.”

“Pimp or perish.”

“Right.” I toasted him with my wineglass, splashing a little on the table. “Oops, sorry. That’s how it’s done in the Art School of Hard Knocks.”

“And you’re a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks.”

“Damn right. I worked my ass off… I worked harder, faster, and smarter than the rest of them… and look where it’s gotten me. The police on two continents are searching for me, and a lunatic with a rocket launcher wants to blow me up.”

“Maybe you tried too hard.”

“Maybe you’re right. And maybe I stepped into a manhole. I want to go. I’m tried of confessing my sins to you,” I said, annoyed at him.

I tried to get my wallet to pay the bill, but I was having a hard time getting it out of my handbag.

“Hey, you’re the one that wanted the truth.” He threw some money on the table. “I’ll get this one.”

“Whatever.” I was too drunk to care who paid. I took a deep breath of air and pride and walked determinedly out of the bar without swaying. I think.

When we got back to the hotel, I stood outside the door to my room and faced him, full of remorse. “I’m feeling sorry for myself again. I keep thinking about Abdullah and Albert. Two innocent people dying because of something I was involved in. Lipton and his snotty Gate Keeper didn’t deserve to die, either. But it’s the faces of the first two that haunt me. I guess because I liked both of them. Sometimes you run into people who are unique. In a homogenized world, the idealistic Iraqi and the gay young artist were unique. They were priceless.”

“You didn’t cause their deaths.”

“Yes, I did. My boss, Neal, Lipton, all the dealers and curators and collectors in the world… we’re all whores of Babylon, willing to do anything to get what we want.”

“You can’t stop all the crazies in this world. Shit happens. You just gotta deal with it.”

He made it sound so simple. But it wasn’t. I had pushed too hard. And looked the other way too often. Now look at the mess I was in.

I gazed into his eyes, searching for an answer. I thought about the comment he made that I needed a good man in my life. He was right. I did. The words came out without any hesitation. “Do you want to fuck me?”

I suddenly needed to be held in a man’s arms and loved, really loved.

He put my hand on the bulge between his legs. He was getting a hard-on. It pulsated against my palm.

“I cannot tell a lie.”

“You men are pricks. Sex is always on your minds. We poor women have to satisfy your cravings.” I pulled him into my room. “Go ahead, you bastard; take advantage of me.”

I didn’t want to think about my troubles. I just wanted my brains fucked out so I could get a good night’s sleep.

***

I awoke sometime during the night and snuggled up against his back. He turned and took me in his arms.

This time our sex wasn’t fast and desperate but slow and deliberate. We caressed each other, building up the sexual excitement, climbing higher and higher, until we both couldn’t stand it anymore. I felt something different that evening with Coby.