Zagreb Cowboy (26 page)

“And you’d given up thinking about sex since then?”

“Well, it had started coming back a little. Maybe in the past six months. It starts really randomly. Somebody gives you a look, and rather than just ignoring it or being irritated by it you feel a little ping in your diaphragm. Or a book. Sex scenes you might have skimmed over a few months before, you find yourself reading. Little things. And then one night you wake up to find your nightgown has worked its way up over your hips and you’re on top of the duvet and suddenly you’re aware that you’re naked from the waist down. Or you sit down in the shower to shave your legs and you feel the coldness of the tiles and the heat of the water.”

“I can picture it now.”

“Can you?” The way she was sitting on the sofa had made the already short dress pull up past her thighs so that he saw a little crescent of tanned flesh at the top of her stocking. His breath caught. She could see where he was looking but didn’t move to adjust her clothes. She just reclined there, watching him.

“It’s funny,” she said. “Any other time of my life, with any other man, I’d have expected him by now to be tugging my clothes off as if he were trying to skin a fish. And I’d be helping.”

“You make it sound so dignified. Is that what you’d like?”

“No. Oh, no. I like this. Looking at you and talking. I think I like this more. Sex without sex,” she said.

He gave a heartfelt laugh. “You are unquestionably and achingly beautiful. Would you like me to talk about that?”

“No. That sounds so dull.”

“It sounds like you were building up during the past six months.”

“I’ve been reminding myself. A little after you arrived. More on holiday, remembering you. My memory didn’t do you justice. And then, since I’ve been back, I keep hoping that when I get home, you’ll still be awake.”

“I was, the other night.”

“You were? I can’t even begin to tell you how I cursed the crashing headache I had.”

“I know something that helps headaches.”

“So do I. But I don’t know you well enough to hand you a prescription and ask you to fill it right away.”

“So if you don’t want me to tell you how beautiful you are, what would you like to talk about?” he asked, watching that little crescent grow as she shifted her leg.

“Tell me a story. Tell me the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to you that doesn’t involve sex.”

“You mean food or some other sort of pleasure?” he asked, confused.

“No. I mean something that didn’t involve your having sex with someone else, but that, when you think about it, makes you go weak at the knees.”

Della Torre watched her, bemused. He filled up both of their wineglasses, lit another cigarette, and then lay back down on the sofa. The crescent had become a near half-moon, and he could see the lines of her black suspenders.

“When I was fourteen, I think — yes, it was fourteen — I went on a school trip to the seaside. We went for two weeks every summer. It was a big school, so it would only be two year-groups at a time. But for some reason it was three that year. We went to these huge facilities built for socialist workers, giant concrete blocks of dormitories in amongst the pines, just back from the beach. Usually you stayed in single-sex dormitories with about twenty boys to a cinder-block room. But this time, because there were so many of us, the pupils in the top year got rooms for just four people and some just for two. For some reason I was put in a room with a guy two years above me. He was a real heartthrob. All the girls loved him. He was very good-looking and the teachers really liked him, which was probably why he got a room for just two. I don’t know why they put me in with him.

“It’s funny. Because I’d lived in America, the teachers either hated me and would be as unpleasant as possible — maybe because I represented a threat to their socialist ideals — or they bent over backwards to be nice to me. I think those ones thought we’d be invaded by the U.S. in the next war and wanted a bit of insurance against the fact that they were all members of the Communist Party.

“Anyway, for whatever reason, I got to share the room with this boy. It was a tiny room. We had bunk beds, but you could only just squeeze between the wall and the bed. He took the top, as you’d expect. He was very nice, very kind, except that every night he told me not to draw the blinds and made sure the window was unlatched and a bit open. It irritated me because there were these yellow arc lights outside and they were on the whole night, and leaving the window open meant the mosquitoes got in. But who was I to say anything?” He stubbed out the cigarette.

“I learned why he had this arrangement the third night into the holiday. I’d been asleep, but I heard the window open and somebody come in. It woke me up, and I froze. I thought it was burglars come in to slit our throats, and for some reason I thought if I played dead they’d leave me alone. It wasn’t burglars. It was one of the girls in the boy’s year, one of those high school girls who looks like a ripe peach, who all the boys fantasize about but are too terrified ever to talk to. I saw her as she climbed up the ladder. ‘Be quiet,’ he said. I remember her saying, ‘Don’t worry, Gringo’s asleep.’”

“Gringo?”

Della Torre could have slapped himself. “It’s my nickname. Everyone calls me that. All Yugoslavs and ex-Yugoslavs are cowboys-and-Indians fanatics. They started calling me that because I’d lived in America. I don’t like the name, but it stuck.”

“I like it. It’s better than calling you della Torre.”

“Okay, I was defeated on this one years ago. At least my father and my ex-wife don’t call me Gringo.”

“You were telling me a story, Gringo.”

“She said, ‘Don’t worry. He’s asleep. I saw him.’” He paused, pulling together the memory.

“And what happened next?”

“What you might expect. Except that the whole while, she was narrating in one of those stage whispers that you can hear across an auditorium. She was saying exactly what she was doing to him, exactly what he was doing to her, exactly where and how he was touching her or she him or she herself. It was like one of those voice-overs that movies do for blind people.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I was frozen stiff.”

“Stiff?”

“Well, yes. But I didn’t dare move a muscle. I don’t think I breathed for twenty minutes.”

“Is that how long it went on?”

“I think so. Maybe not. But it certainly felt that long.”

“And then?”

“When they’d finished, she climbed back down the ladder. It was right by my head. She got most of the way down and she stopped. She asked the boy for a last kiss and he obliged. They kissed for what seemed like eternity. And as they did she pulled up this long T-shirt she was wearing. I could smell her; it was the headiest, most musky scent I’d ever smelled in my life. And I could see her in the light of those yellow lamps. And as they kissed she kept rocking her hips forward and backward, forward and backward.”

Harry swallowed hard and looked at della Torre, lips slightly apart, eyes wide. “Do you think they knew you weren’t asleep?”

“The next day I was on the beach, just sitting and getting some sun, when she came over and sat next to me. For some reason I was alone just then. She looked straight at me from a couple of feet away, not saying anything but not even pretending to look at anything else. Finally I had to say hi, but I think I must have blushed like a boiled scampi. She said, ‘So, Gringo, did you like our conversation last night?’ I thought it must be some trap and I stammered, ‘But we didn’t talk. I mean, I don’t remember talking to you last night.’ And she said, with a straight face, ‘You didn’t talk, but I did. Did you like our conversation? The one where you were quiet as a mouse while I was telling you things. Do you remember that one?’ I swear I felt like crying. I didn’t know how to answer, so I didn’t. Eventually she just got up and went away.”

“Was that the end of your relationship?”

“More or less. But it was one of the most memorable ones I’ve ever had. So what’s your story?”

She took a swallow of wine and put the glass down. The movement pulled her dress up, fully exposing her small black lace underwear and the bottom of her belly. Hard as he might try, he couldn’t pull his eyes away. So he just gave up trying.

“I hope you don’t think I always dress like this. Normally it’s just ordinary white smalls and tights.”

“I know. You hang them from the rail in my bathroom. You were about to tell me a story.”

“Yes, I was,” she said languidly. “After university and after I came back from teaching in New Guinea and moved to London, I used to do some art courses in the evenings. Drawing still lifes and nudes. At the end of the course we had a project. One still life and one nude. The bowl of fruit was easy enough, but I didn’t want to draw another one of those saggy middle-aged models or skinny art students.

“It was funny. Some of the boys we drew were all penis, a skinny little body and a huge penis. There was nothing sexy about that. A friend of mine at the time was heavily pregnant and I got the idea that I’d do a demure drawing of a pregnant female form. We used to have coffee on weekend mornings and she’d spend her whole while complaining about being pregnant, about how she couldn’t sleep at night and how her boobs hurt and her back hurt and how she didn’t even know whether she’d like the kid when it was born, never mind all the worries about labour.

“But she looked so beautiful. She glowed with it. Some women look terrible when they’re pregnant, their hair goes all lank and their skin goes bad, but she was just . . . well, I don’t know another word to describe it. Anyway, I suggested to her that she might like to be a model for me. It was sort of a joke, because I didn’t really think she’d agree. But she said yes, as if I’d asked her to bake me some cookies or something. No problem.

“No doubt I was nervous when she came over to my place. I had a futon on the floor and some cushions for her to recline on, and the apartment was nice and warm. We had a couple of glasses of wine and a little gossip, and then she said we’d better get down to it.

“I’d expected her to do as the other models did and get undressed in another room and come in a dressing gown. I guess she didn’t know the form, because she just got undressed right there. She took her socks off, her shirt, her bra, and her trousers — those things with a tent in front of them that pregnant women wear. Her belly was really tight and her breasts were big, really big; her nipples were like out of some men’s cartoon.

“She sat on the futon and reclined. I said, ‘It’s a nude, but if you want to keep your pants on that’s okay. She said she was doing it out of consideration for my futon rather than any sense of shyness. I told her not to worry, so she stripped down. I’d expected to draw her in profile, but she said, ‘Why? It’s not a nude that way.’ So she lay back on the cushions, with her legs a bit like this.” Harry pulled one knee back and opened her thighs.

Della Torre felt his heart beating in his throat.

“It was hard drawing her, because she wasn’t particularly still. She’d rub her belly because it itched or under her breasts or run her hand on her hip, or have another sip of wine.” Harry took another sip of wine.

“She was talking the whole while about what it was like to be pregnant. She ran through all the stuff she’d ever complained about. But then she said one of the funniest things was that the bigger she got, the more she thought about sex. Her boyfriend is a sweet soul, but he wanted it less and less because he thought he’d hurt the baby. She was lying there saying she always felt ravenous for it. And as I drew her, she swelled. I mean, between her legs. She swelled so that she started to open up. I’d never seen that in another woman.

“It was deeply sexy to see someone in such a sensuous mood. I’ve never been attracted to women, and I wasn’t to her either, but there was something so achingly delicious about her right then. She wasn’t at all embarrassed. She just let me look at her and draw her. In the end I couldn’t submit the drawing. I did one of her from memory in profile that wasn’t nearly as good. I’ve still got the original, though.”

“Could I see it?” asked della Torre.

The drawing was as she’d described the making of it. A strikingly featured woman with an insouciant gaze, her breasts and belly heavy, and then her voluptuousness. Harry knelt by him as he looked at it.

“You’re a very good artist. A very good artist. I’m — I don’t really know what to say.”

She kissed him, long and leisurely.

“Did you like it when we went to the coast? Did you like what we did? Or have you forgotten?” she asked.

He stood up with the intention of walking her to the bedroom, holding her hand, anticipating a long night. But the depth of his hunger was taken over by something else, first slowly and then more rapidly.

It started under his right ribcage and then spread into his back, gripping his side like a deep, unyielding cramp that came on hard and left an imprint on him. And then it came back with redoubled force.

It was all he could do to stop crying out.

“Marko? Are you all right? What’s happening? Marko? Gringo?”

But he was on his knees, breathing shallowly, the vise in his side squeezing ever harder.

HE’D WAITED IN
the taxi queue at the airport for half an hour, and it wasn’t getting any shorter. Were there really no taxis in London? Somebody from the airport’s management said something about traffic problems on the motorway that Strumbić didn’t quite understand, and about frequent trains into town, which he did. So he turned around, went back through the terminal entrance, and followed the signs to the adjoining rail station.

He was thoroughly pissed off. Nothing had gone right about the trip since he’d picked up the pink Mercedes. But at least he’d got out of the country without any problems. Strumbić had been quiet for months, had kept his head down. He’d even stopped shouting at the Bosnians. Their last call had worried him, though; they said they were in Zagreb, and he believed them.

Just as well the
UDBA
had relaxed their grip on him, what with all the other stuff they had to think about. It made it easy for him to slip out of the country. He’d always meant to be gone before the war came, and the war was coming damn fast.

He’d had to find Branko in hospital and then had to bribe the old crone to get his own mail. She refused to believe he was the Mr. Smirnoff to whom the letters were addressed, and he didn’t have photo identification to prove it. They were a poor likeness, but the pictures on the banknotes finally convinced her. When she’d seen enough of them.

It’d have been more satisfying to have called on Mr. Beretta. He felt the solidity of the shoulder holster under his jacket. He hadn’t liked being without the gun; having to take it apart for the flight and hide it in his modest check-in bag made him uncomfortable. There were anxious minutes as he watched the luggage carousel go round, other travellers picking up their bags, before he saw his own solidly locked case. But he didn’t relax until he’d reassembled the gun in the privacy of a toilet cubicle, not caring that others might have heard the hard, metallic clicks. Let them think what they liked.

Ever since della Torre had shot him and the Bosnians had started harassing him about the money, he’d kept a bullet in the chamber. If only he’d managed to find those bloody hicks, he’d have rid himself of most of his troubles. And maybe got a medal to boot. Delivering a couple of corpses identified as the Karlovac killers, with a probable Slavonski Brod witness confirmation and who knew what else, would have made him untouchable. The
UDBA
would certainly have eased off. As for della Torre, well, who cared.

Unfortunately, they weren’t quite as stupid as Bosnian hillbillies ought to be. Either they had better connections than he had thought possible or they were both sly and lucky. It didn’t help him that his moves were circumscribed by Messar. If Messar got wind that Strumbić was hunting the Bosnians, those
UDBA
bloodsuckers wouldn’t leave him to fart in private. If they got hold of della Torre or the Bosnians before he did, or at least before he’d done a runner, he’d be breaking rocks on Goli Otok for the rest of his miserable life. Or whatever new corner of hell they were using to replace it. And then they’d probably hang him.

Life was a pain in the ass sometimes, he thought, boarding a rickety carriage that had a door by every pair of seats. He was disgusted. What kind of country was this? Even Yugoslavia had more modern trains. The ones that weren’t were at least clean. He popped his suitcase in the overhead rack, taking care where he sat. It smelled of spilled beer, and black discs of dried chewing gum mottled the ancient blue and orange patterned seats.

Still, at least those crowds waiting for taxis hadn’t shifted to the train en masse. As far as he could tell, the carriage was mostly empty, meaning he wouldn’t have to deal with any of those endless brown, yellow, or black people London seemed so full of. True, pretty girls of all colours fascinated him; the more exotic, the more they intrigued him, made him wonder if they fit together the same way as the girls back home. But the rest of them — the kids, the middle-aged and old folks, and especially the men — all looked like they belonged in zoos.

The train lurched forward. A wash of evening light showed him a bland, rubbish-strewn route towards central London.
These people really live like pigs. Thank god I found somewhere nice in the city, even if I had to pay through the nose for it
, he thought. That reminded him. Another thing to be pissed off about. The mail at Branko’s confirmed his worst fears. The agents had taken another ten thousand pounds out of his account. He was going to have to discuss things with them. Forcefully. He’d see how they liked staring into Mr. Beretta’s unblinking eye.

He was looking out the window when he saw, in his peripheral vision, four adolescent boys suddenly appear over him. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, but they were bullet-headed and big. Two black boys, one brown, and a skinny white one with red hair. Two were holding knives. One punched him, a short, flat blow to the temple.

“Money. Give us your money or you get hurt. Understand?”

“Money,” said another one, parroting the first.

“Quick, or we cut you, man.”

“Giss yo money.”

They were pulsating with aggression, crowding over him, the kitchen knives pointing at him. The one who’d punched him hit him again, knocking his head against the window.

Strumbić reached into his jacket. He clicked off the safety with his thumb and pulled the Beretta out if its holster. Most cops have a philosophy of showing the criminals they’re armed, to let them know what they’re dealing with, and then giving a verbal warning, and only then firing off a warning shot.

Strumbić belonged to the other school of thought. Every time he pulled the trigger, he made sure it counted.

He caught the nearest black boy twice in the middle, knocking him back across the aisle into the other set of bench seats. The brown boy got it in the ribs and the red-headed boy in the neck or jaw — Strumbić couldn’t quite tell, because he more or less flipped over backwards.

They were all screaming like skewered pigs, especially the black boy who’d got away. There seemed to be more of them farther along the carriage. It was just a nine-millimetre gun, but it did a good job of spreading blood. He vaguely wondered whether the railway people would clean it off or just let it soak in with all the rest of the disgusting effluvia coating the train.

Somebody pulled the emergency cord and the train slammed to a stop in a section of line that had a dozen sets of parallel tracks. The carriage emptied of kids, all more or less like the ones he’d plugged, the doors left hanging open. How he could have not noticed them bewildered him, though he reasoned it probably had to do with the carriage’s layout of mini-compartments and high-backed seats. They streamed across the lines, heedless of the possibility of being pulverized by any passing train, and ran up the embankment and then through a chain-link fence.

Strumbić grabbed his suitcase and followed them out, leaving the whimpering messes behind him. The drop from the carriage onto the tracks was longer than he’d expected. He was about to head in the direction the kids had taken when another train rumbled along on a parallel track, coming from where his train had been heading to. It stopped, cutting him off from the embankment. But that was no bad thing.

The train was exactly like the one he’d got off: a series of doors in a carriage that had probably seen wartime service. He shrugged, got his shoe onto a little foothold under one of the doors, opened it, pushed his suitcase in, and then clambered after it, slamming the door behind him.

The carriage, as far as he could tell, was full of Japanese. Row upon row of yellow faces and identical blue suitcases, each with a round red label stuck to it. They looked at him, startled, and looked away when he returned their gaze. He walked down the aisle until he found a free seat in a block of four, the three Japanese smiling and bobbing their heads as he sat down. They were so polite, he smiled and bobbed his head in return. The train moved off, the intercom crackling with a barely decipherable apology from the driver about signalling problems.

He got off at the next stop. Gatwick Airport. The taxi queue was marginally shorter than it had been when he’d left, but at least the cabs were once again flowing. He finally got in one but was then stuck for what to tell the driver.

“London.”

“Big town, London. Anywhere specific?”

Strumbić mulled for a second as the car pulled away. He didn’t have keys to the flat. His intention had been to get into town early enough to call in at the estate agency and get their set of spares, along the way maybe having a preliminary discussion about why they were looting his account. He didn’t buy their story about the building sliding down Hampstead Hill. But they’d be shut this time of evening.

Still, it’d be no hardship to put up for a night in the hotel he’d stayed at before, on the recommendation of an Albanian he knew who did good business in London. There were always entertaining girls to be found at the bar and, failing that, it wasn’t far to Soho.

“Piccadilly,” he said.

“Bright lights. Big city. Piccadilly is a fine place to go for a good time.”

Strumbić decided that taxi-driver patter in a language he barely understood was bad enough ordinarily, but with the loss of at least thirty thousand pounds hanging over his head, not to mention the railway slaughter, he felt entitled to slide the driver’s little window shut, pull out a cigarette, and ignore the no-smoking sticker on the glass facing him.