The Sam Gunn Omnibus (106 page)

“It’s a trick Josef Stalin used,”
he told me before I could say a word. “Put your chair on a platform and saw the
legs down on your visitors’ chairs.”

“I should have expected as much,” I
growled, “from you.”

“Don’t be touchy, Silver One. Isn’t
the complex terrific? Your boss seemed to have a great time. I see he brought
la Marlowe
with him.”

“It’s terrific all right,” I growled.
“Too terrific.”

Sam’s pie plate of a face took on a
look of hurt innocence. “Whaddaya mean?”

“Sam, you couldn’t possibly have
built all this and staffed it so handsomely on the funding Rockledge has
provided you.”

He steepled his fingers in front of
his face for a moment, then nodded. “No fooling you, eh?”

“What’s going on?”

“Well, I knew the half-bill you
ponied up wouldn’t cover everything I wanted to do, so I took in another
partner.”

“Another partner? You can’t do
that! The terms of our agreement—”

“Not really a partner, not legally,”
Sam interjected, looking like a mischievous imp. “I used your funding as
leverage for a loan that really paid for building the complex. And staffing it.”

“A loan? Who in his right” mind
would loan you a penny, unless you held the threat of blackmail over him?”

“There are people,” Sam said
slowly, “who specialize in high-risk loans.”

“People? Who?”

“They also have a lot of experience
in running gambling casinos and, uh, other entertaining diversions.”

“Experience in—” Suddenly it hit me.
“Oh my God! The Mafia! You’re in with the Mafia!”

Sam tut-tutted. “They haven’t
called themselves that in half a century. And they’re international now, not
just Sicilian: there’s Russians, Japanese, Colombians; they’ve gone global,
just like all the other major industries.”

“The Mafia,” I groaned. “You’re in
league with—”

“Call them the Syndicate. That’s
the name they prefer.”

“They’re the bloody Maf
i
a!” I snapped.

“Be polite to them,” Sam warned. “Call
them the Syndicate when you talk to them.”

“Me? Talk to the likes of them?
Never!”

Sam shook his head sadly. “Never
say never, pal.” And he pointed with a stubby finger past my shoulder.

Turning, I saw a slinky, sultry,
sallow-cheeked young woman with lustrous long black hair and smoldering dark
almond-shaped eyes set in high cheekbones. How long she had been standing in
the doorway of Sam’s office I had no way of knowing. I distinctly remembered
having closed the door when I came into the office. She must have opened it
without making a sound.

Sam got to his feet. “Pierre,
mon confrere,
may
I introduce Ilyana Campanella Chang. Ilyana, Pierre D’Argent, head of space
operations for—”

“For Rockledge Industries, I know,”
she said in a smoky voice. Ms. Chang was wearing a skintight black dress that
showed a tantalizing amount of bosom and shimmered as she walked to the chair
next to mine. “Walked” is only an approximation of the way she moved. She reminded
me of a jungle beast, a sleek black leopard or maybe a slithering boa
constrictor. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She sat down and crossed her
long, beautiful legs.

Sam was staring at her, too. He had
always been partial to sultry brunettes. And bubbly blondes. And tempestuous
redheads. Sam was an equal-opportunity chaser, making no discrimination against
anyone female who was even mildly attractive. Ms. Chang was much more than mild.
Much.

“Ilyana is the Syndicate’s local
representative,” Sam said, in a voice choked with testosterone. Or perhaps it
was fear.

She smiled silkily at me. “What you
call the Mafia. As Sam told you, we have become a global enterprise. My own
family heritage is part Russian, part Italian, and part Chinese.”

“The Ma—” I cut the word short. “I
mean, the Syndicate. You?”

“Does that surprise you?” she
asked.

I
glanced at Sam.
He was still walleyed, obviously enraptured by this vision of dangerous
loveliness.

“Frankly, it does,” I replied. “I wouldn’t
think that a young woman such as yourself would be involved in criminal
activities.”

Her smile widened enough to show
teeth. “I was born to it. I’m a Family person, on both sides of my family.”

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered.

“Well, you are in Hell,” Sam said,
regaining some of his composure.

“And you will remain here,” said
Ilyana, with a hint of steel in her voice, “until our business is brought to a
satisfactory conclusion.”

“Our business? What business?”

“Our global operation is expanding,”
said Ms. Chang. “We’re going interplanetary.”

I
understood her
immediately. “You want to get your hooks into this facility, here on the Moon.”

She smiled approvingly at me. “Mr.
Gunn, here—our darling Sam— has borrowed a rather large sum of money from the
Syndicate. It is time to repay.”

I
drew myself up
straighten “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I’m afraid it does,” she said.

Before I could reply, Sam jumped
in. “I told you, I used your money as collateral on a bigger loan. None of the
regular banks would handle it, so the Syndicate loaned me enough to get this
complex built.”

“And staffed,” said Ilyana. “Those
are mostly our people out there, dealing at the gaming tables, working in the
restaurants and shops and, uh ... therapy centers.”

“She means Hell’s Belles,” Sam
explained.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you
talk me into this!” I shouted.

“Too late, old pal. Now it’s time
to pay the piper.”

I
started to answer, but hesitated. All right, Sam had
snookered me into this, true enough. But the complex was built. Everything was
working f
i
ne. It could become a major
tourist attraction and a big moneymaker for Rockledge. I reasoned that if I bailed
Sam out on this stupid loan, it would be only on the condition that he
relinquish all his interest in the resort. Rockledge would have the complex
free and clear, which was exactly what the CEO and I wanted.

“How
much money are we talking about?” I asked.

“Fifteen
billion,” Sam said.

Before
I could faint, Ilyana said, “Eighteen billion. You forgot this afternoon’s interest.”

“Oh,
yeah, that’s right.”

“Eighteen
billion
?”
I screeched.

“Tomorrow
morning it will be twenty point six,” Ilyana said sweetly. “The interest mounts
rather steeply.”

“How
steeply?”

“Forty
percent,” Sam answered.

“Compounded
semi-daily,” Ilyana added.

“That’s
usury!”

Her
smile turned pitying. “Rockledge owns a credit service that charges almost as much.”

“It’s
still usury,” I insisted.

“Nevertheless,”
she said, “that is what is owed. Sam doesn’t have the wherewithal to pay it, so
you must.”

“Me?
When elephants fly! Why don’t you just kill the little sonofabitch and be done
with it?”

Ilyana
made a little pout. “What good would killing Sam do? We want the money you owe
us, not a corpse.”

“Besides,”
Sam chimed in, “Ilyana and I are thinking about getting married, settling down.
Right, hon?”

She
blew him a kiss. The little rat! He’s romancing this Mafia princess to save his
own skin while he’s putting my neck on the guillotine!

Ilyana
turned back to me. “I’m afraid you must pay, Mr. D’Argent. You are Sam’s
partner, after all, and responsible for his debts. Surely a giant corporation
such as Rockledge can afford a few billions.”

“Over
my dead—” Again I stopped myself short. Maybe she didn’t want to kill Sam, but
I didn’t know how she felt about murder in general.

“Mr.
D’Argent,” Ilyana said, almost pleadingly, “don’t make this difficult for us
and for yourself. You must pay. Otherwise your board of directors will never
return to Earth. Alive, that is.”

“You
... you’re threatening the entire board?”

“And
their spouses, I’m afraid,” Ilyana said, nearly managing to look sad.

“My
wife ...”

“Your
spaceship will have a terrible accident when it leaves the Moon. There will be
no survivors.”

“And
no witnesses,” Sam added, almost cheerfully.

I
glowered at him. “You’ll be a witness.”

“Ah,
but I’m going to be married into the Family,” Sam said. “Right, Ilyana, my
precious angel?”

She
blew him another kiss.

Then
she got up from her chair like a beautiful python gliding up a tree and said, “You
two gentlemen will want to talk this over, I know. Sam, darling, please call me
when you’ve decided what you’re going to do.”

Sam
nodded vigorously. Ilyana went to the door while we both watched her, half
hypnotized by her graceful beauty.

She
opened the door, then turned back toward us. “Oh, by the way, the chairman of
our
board is staying at the hotel here and would like to meet you both this
evening.”

“The
chairman of your board?” I echoed.

“Yes.
In bygone years he’d be called the
capo di tutti capi.
Or perhaps the Godfather.”

She
smiled sweetly and left the office, closing the door behind her without making
a sound.

For
several moments Sam and I were absolutely silent. At last I said, “She must be
marvelous in bed.”

“How
would I know?” Sam replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of innocence. “For
all I know, she’s still a virgin.”

“You
mean you haven’t—”

“Not
one finger. If I even tried to, a dozen goons would drag me off to her
Godfather, who would hang me by my
cojones
and use my head for batting practice.”

I
groaned. “Sam, Sam ... how did I ever let you talk me
into this?”

“That’s
not important now. The problem now is, how are we going to get out of this?”

He
had a point.

I
couldn’t go to my CEO and ask for twenty billion
dollars. The half-billion I had funneled to Sam had been a major strain. And I couldn’t
face their Godfather without having the twenty billion to hand over to him. As
I sat there sweating, Sam drummed his fingers on his desk.

“I’m pretty sure they won’t kill
you,” he said at last.

“Pretty sure?”

“What good would it do them?”

“It certainly wouldn’t do
me
much
good,” I groused. “Nor my wife. Nor the board of directors.”

“Let me think about this,” Sam
said, scratching at his red thatch of hair. “There’s gotta be a way out.”

I
thought of the
line from Marlowe’s
Doctor Faustus:
“Why this is hell, nor am I out
of it.”

My wife and I were scheduled to
have dinner with the CEO, his wife, and several key board members at Hell
Crater’s finest restaurant, The Fallen Angel. Ordinarily an invitation like
this would have been a step toward promotion, perhaps even an opportunity to
join the board. I should have been overjoyed and eager with anticipation.
Instead, as I put on my tuxedo that evening and struggled with the shirt studs,
what I felt was anxiety bordering on dread.