Just Can't Help Believing, page 23
“Pinche pendejo” is the reply. “Hijo de puta!”
“Drop. Your. Guns. Fucko,” Paulie instructs, speaking louder now, just in case these two Mexicans are deaf as well as dumb.
* * *
The heavy-metal drumming of my heart tells me I need to escape. “No me dispares! Don’t shoot me! No me dispares! Don’t shoot me!” I hear myself plead, my eyes squeezed shut, and my hands aloft in surrender. “I did GCSE Spanish. If you let my friends and me leave this room unharmed, I’ll translate for you, before anyone dies unnecessarily,” I say, trying to negotiate our release with the potty-mouthed hothead I knocked out in Vegas.
“Any of you cock-sucking fucks so much as twitch and I’ll hack off your balls with this fuck’s knife and have Jailhouse Cock there dance on them like he’s on the Ed fuckin’ Sullivan Show.”
I believe he has rejected my offer.
“Start fuckin’ translatin’, dickhead.”
Though apparently not all of my offer.
“Okay, so, let’s see. I might be a little bit rusty as I haven’t used Spanish for a while,” I caution. “And I only got a C when I was predicted to get an A, which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise as instead of doing it at A Level, as was my original plan, I did English, which…”
“Stop fuckin’ babblin’ or I’ll shoot you in the face,” Potty Mouth says.
“Right, sure. So you asked who the fuck they are, to which the reply was something along the lines of “I shit on your dead.’”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Not me ― him, the Mexican! I wouldn’t shit on your dead. Or shit on anyone you know, living or dead. I’m just repeating what he said, as you asked. Remember, just now?” I hurriedly blurt.
“He then called you a ‘fucking asshole’ and, I think the literal translation of what he said next is ‘fucking mother’. Now, I’m not sure if he was suggesting that he has fucked your mother, or that you fuck your own mother, as in motherfucker.”
“Motherfucker!”
“That would also be my guess.”
* * *
Margarita Moreno. Caleb answers the question he asked himself the second he caught sight of the Santa Muerte tattoo on the Mexican’s heart. Margarita had the same artwork, hers inked onto her forearm, which Caleb had a hold of as he placed her in cuffs. He later learnt that the Saint of Death is an artwork worn only by the boss of the Ahuehuete Cartel, which Margarita was at the time of her arrest, a position which always passes down through familial lines.
The next question he asks himself is why the boss of the Ahuehuete Cartel would fly 8,000 miles to be in this room? Not to steal an artwork, however valuable it might be. That would be a task for someone lower ranked, like his yappy sidekick here. Caleb knows that if a boss was prepared to get his hands dirty, it would be in order to settle a deeply personal score. Marty. And if he’s right about that, he’s also sure that his chances of getting Marty to face justice on his terms are about to be shot to pieces. Unless…
“What did you score in English, a D?” Caleb asks Jimmy. “The man asked you who the hell these guys are, so get asking.”
* * *
Is he still angry about the dog who ejaculated on him?
“Quién eres tú?” I ask, as instructed, shooting Caleb a disgruntled look.
For the first time since they entered the room, it’s the Mexican with the loud shirt, not the loud mouth, who speaks.
“Soy Miguel Moreno. El pirata. El anticristo. Hijo de Margarita. He venido por el corazon de Marty,” he says.
“I am Miguel Moreno. The pirate. The, erm, antichrist. Son of Margarita,” I translate, failing to capture the chilling tone in which the words were delivered.
“’The pirate?” interrupts George. “Is this who you thought I was?” he asks Potty Mouth, “How could you mix us up, when it’s obvious one of us don’t speak English?”
“How ’bout you shut up and let Jimmy finish what he was saying,” Caleb suggests.
“He says he has ‘come for the heart of Marty’,” I conclude. “And by the way he said it, I’d wager that’s literal, as opposed to a romantic metaphor.”
“And that’s why you only got a C at Spanish,” Caleb states.
“What the fuck did your grandpa just say? Have you been fuckin’ with me?” Potty Mouth asks me.
“No! I swear! That’s what he said!”
I think Caleb is trying to have me killed. Probably sees this as an opportunity to make sure I can’t breathe a word about Elvis being alive. Now I can’t breathe at all. I’m grasping forlornly at air, choking on saliva and coughing hard to keep the blackness at bay, but still it comes. Relentless. Swarming. Suffocating.
* * *
“What he said was almost correct,” Caleb says, before being cut short by the sound of Jimmy being sick on George’s blue suede shoes and slumping to the floor. “As I was saying,” he continues, unperturbed. “He was just a little off, hearing ‘heart’, when the guy said ‘art’. And mistakenly translating the word ‘Modigliani’ as ‘Marty’. In short, he actually said he has come for the art of Modigliani.”
It was a little lie intended to have a large consequence; leaving the mobster with no option but to pull the trigger to safeguard his artwork and, in the process, clear Caleb’s path to Marty of its biggest, most heavily armed obstacle. Yet Caleb can’t let that grandpa barb pass.
“He did, however, forget to translate the part where the Mexican said you’re as dumb as you are fat and ugly,” he adds.
The sideways kick that lands across the back of Caleb’s knees — delivered with force by the swing of a thigh-high leather boot furnished with a 12-inch metal stiletto heel — see his legs buckle beneath him, halving his six-foot-plus frame to a mere three foot nothing, a reduced target that the mobster easily misses when he fires his gun.
“Stay down,” Cindy tells Caleb, battling to make herself heard above the deafening roar of rapid gunfire that reverberates round the centuries-old drawing room.
“I tracked your phone,” she feels compelled to explain, despite the unfolding gravity of the situation, seeing Caleb looking perplexed. “I was worried.”
* * *
The once handsome but crumbling colonial building in downtown Bogotá, which housed the clinic of surgeon Jose Antonio Gomez, also served as an architectural metaphor for the scale of transformation Marty Pollack demanded for his angelic face. The one million dollars Margarita Moreno had dangled as a prize for the person who delivered her Marty’s head, however it came, had hastened his requirement, and with it the need for him to understand Spanish, as the man holding the scalpel was unable to converse in any other tongue.
Marty would go on to become fluent in the language, lying low in the Colombian countryside and developing an insatiable appetite for buñuelos (fried dough fritters), which rounded his face and figure. Both account for why he understands every word Miguel Moreno said, and why he’s unable to shift the weight of his body from the floor as he tries to escape, rendering useless his sweaty efforts to shuffle away unnoticed as the bullets fly around him.
From where he lies, Cornelius sees the standoff — through eyelids that flutter to the jarring soundtrack of gunfire — come to a bloody end; Miguel Moreno making the fatal error of following the path of a bullet that misses his head by an inch, leaving one of the Americans with a free shot at him. Moreno’s sidekick reacts by spraying both Americans with bullets, causing one to inadvertently muscle spasm and pull the trigger as his final act, hitting the Mexican between the eyes.
Now, with four bodies down, Cornelius can only see Tony, looming over him with a manic grin.
“Well, that was a stroke of luck, wasn’t it?” Tony says, reaffirming his mock Italian and white-knuckle grip on his knife. “Now, where was I?”
* * *
Caleb watches as Elvis fires a bullet at Tony’s knife with such precision that it hits the base of the handle, propelling it clean from Tony’s hand.
“George, I want you to tie these two up with their own belts,” Elvis orders, pointing with his perfectly polished Colt Python pistol toward Tony’s supporting cast, who are crouched down behind a chair and floor lamp respectively, their faces gradually appearing as they retract their arms from shielding their heads.
“Yes, boss!” George says, delighted
“You mind if I take care of him myself?” Caleb asks, nodding at Tony.
“This one’s mine,” Cindy insists, stepping in Caleb’s way. Her timely arrival at Long Hall was due to a five-minute delay demanded by her best-paying client, who had called to be scolded by Mistress Ranger for doing a dirty in his nappy.
Caleb looks at Cindy, a long pink whip readied in her hand and her eyes crystal clear with steely intent behind her leather mask. “Be my guest,” he says.
Tony laughs, a deep, guttural roar, to which Cindy responds by cracking the whip across her palm.
“You know, your little friend, Amelia? Her screams were nothing more than a whimper once all those men had been through her,” taunts Tony, jabbing a right fist into Cindy’s face as she tries to land a fury-laden punch of her own.
Caleb tries to steam in as Cindy falls to the floor, but he’s blocked at the chest by Elvis’s arm.
“You know, you hit like a little boy,” Cindy says calmly, rising to draw blood from the tip of Tony’s nose with a firm crack of her whip.
Elvis affords himself an appreciative nod.
Cindy slips Tony’s next punch by ducking under it and swiping his standing leg from the floor with a swift, circular kick of her right boot, taking him to the ground and pinning him there with the point of her stiletto heel.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, Tony,” she says. “Now it’s time to receive your punishment.”
She aims the stamp of her 12-inch heel at Tony’s crotch, eliciting a high-pitched squeak that makes Caleb wince.
“Did she sound something like that?” Cindy asks, whipping Tony ferociously, furiously, feverishly about his head and body until her energy and breath is spent. Caleb takes her by the arm, leading her away while instructing George to tie up Tony, who is whimpering, pitifully.
“You and I should talk,” Elvis tells Cindy.
* * *
The stab wound to Cornelius’s lower chest pains him with each shortening breath. Blood is beginning to pool and seep into the grain of the drawing room’s original wood flooring, the colour having long since drained from his pallid face.
“What’s the matter, Marty?” Elvis asks, standing over Cornelius’s beached whale of a body with Caleb at his side. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“How?” Cornelius splutters, the bewilderment in his eyes unshielded by his trademark blood-red lenses.
“The devil was able to hoodwink humanity into doubting his existence so he could do his work undetected. I’m here to tell you that two can play that game,” Elvis says.
“George, go wake up Jimmy. Tell him it’s time for his scoop,” Caleb orders, speaking through the thin gap where his teeth haven’t quite met in a rageful clench.
Elvis quotes from the Book of Proverbs: “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
“All things considered, I’d say you qualify for all seven. Wouldn’t you agree, Marty?”
Caleb looks down to see that he’s planted a foot in Cornelius’s slick of ebony blood. “You feel a little pain?” he asks, pressing his foot slowly but firmly into the open wound until Cornelius’s piercing cry sounds as music to Caleb’s ears. “I’ve been in pain since that night in ’72.”
“It’s time to confess your sins, Marty,” Elvis states, his Colt Python cocked to hiss.
“Why Marie?” Caleb asks. “She had the sweetest soul and you dared sour it.”
The emotion unleashed by the very mention of her name in the presence of her tormentor leaves Caleb’s head light, his muscles heavy, and his face flush but softened by a veil of tears; the first tears he’s allowed himself at his memory’s relentless replaying of the incident, after which Marie would curl her body into a foetal position night after night, pining for the protection Caleb was too late to deliver.
“Who’s Marie?” spits out Cornelius, the flagrant disregard venomous to Caleb, who rips the Python from Elvis’s hand, pinpoints the gap between Marty’s fearful eyes, and pulls the trigger. Once, twice, three and four times, until it’s clear that the pistol has malfunctioned. Still, five, six. Seven times he tries, failing to fire each time.
“He’s been shot!” George shouts. “Jimmy’s been shot!”
Elvis’s mind is suddenly scrambled, the faint sound of police car sirens growing louder with every thought, demanding their clarity.
“We need to get out of here,” he decides. “We need to get out of here right now.”
31
Ian Wallace doesn’t require his glasses to be on or off to see that the front page of every tabloid and broadsheet newspaper, spread out along the lowest shelf in the newsagent, shows the same picture of Cornelius leaving hospital with the aid of two smiling nurses. He has a thumb raised defiantly to the camera, signalling his wellbeing after what the picture caption details as “the terrifying ordeal” he was subjected to in his own home.
Ian’s eyes settle on The Times, which he bends to pick up before reading its cover story.
LONG HALL SHOOTINGS: MAFIA MEMBERS NAMED AMONG DEAD
The four men shot dead on Monday at Long Hall, the Oxfordshire home of music mogul Cornelius and The Family, have been identified by police as leading figures in US and Mexican crime families.
FBI officials, who were consulted to help with the ongoing case, confirmed to police that Vincent “Vinnie” Boccia and Paulie “Sprinkles” Persico were known members of New York-based crime family the Romanos. The FBI also confirmed that Miguel Moreno — whose daring hijackings of other crews’ spoils earned him the nickname “The Pirate” — was the boss of Mexico’s Ahuehuete Cartel, in which the fourth dead man, Joaquín Garcia, was also a member.
The shootings are the latest chapter in a long-running dispute between the two criminal clans, who are at war over drugs. However, David Heller, Detective Chief Constable of the Thames Valley Police, told reporters that the deadly dispute at Long Hall centred on the Amedeo Modigliani painting stolen last month by a gun-wielding gang while in transit through the streets of London.
Vincent Boccia was the legal owner of the painting, the world’s fifth most valuable artwork, which was on long-term lease to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Boccia had granted the museum permission to loan the painting temporarily to London’s National Gallery, where it was to form the central piece of the gallery’s summer exhibition.
“Despite the severity of the injury he suffered, we are incredibly fortunate that Cornelius was able to tell us everything that happened on the day of the shootings, which also helped us piece together the events leading up to it,” Heller said.
With Cornelius party to the argument which he says sparked the shootings, police are working on the theory that Vincent Boccia arranged the theft of his own painting for the purpose of securing a seven-figure sum from his insurance provider. Tony Capone, a career criminal well known to the Metropolitan Police, was hired by Boccia to steal the artwork, which he was to return to Boccia. However, when Capone skipped the scheduled handover of the painting and was spotted leaving London with it and Jimmy O’Neill, owner of Juice magazine, Boccia supposed he was being double-crossed and followed the pair to Long Hall, where he was trailed by the Ahuehuete Cartel members, who were intent on stealing the prized artwork for themselves.
In a further twist, Cornelius has informed police that it was never Capone’s intention to retain the Modigliani painting, and that he had instead headed to Long Hall to murder him.
“We know that Jimmy O’Neill and Allena Baník conspired to blackmail Cornelius into granting the first interviews with The Family,” Heller said. “Emboldened by the ease with which that plot played out and the millions they made, the pair grew greedy for more, devising a heinous plan to kidnap Nina Tucker and seek a ransom payment of £15 million from Cornelius to secure her return unharmed.
“To ensure their threat carried weight, Mr O’Neill hired Mr Capone, with whom he intended to split the ransom. However, despite Mr Capone’s telephoned threat to conduct a career-ending laryngoscopy on young Ms Tucker, Cornelius refused to pay up, which irked Mr Capone and spurred him into action.”
As he left hospital following surgery for a stab wound, Cornelius told reporters that he was terrified by the events at his home. “I’m not a religious man, but as I lay bleeding, unsure of whether I would live or die, I prayed to be rescued. Not for my own sake, of course, but for The Family and the children whose very life hinges on my charity.”
The Amedeo Modigliani painting was recovered from the scene of the crime at Long Hall, while Tony Capone is currently in police custody.
Eighteen-year-old Nina Tucker is still missing, following her alleged abduction by The Family’s matriarch, Allena Baník, who remains at large.
Meanwhile, Juice magazine owner Jimmy O’Neill is currently under armed guard, pending arrest, at Oxford’s Royal Park Hospital, where he remains unresponsive and in a critical condition following a gunshot wound.
* * *
Staff nurse Yetunde Adamu cowers as she climbs the four steps into the Royal Park Hospital with unusual haste, her pathway to work flanked by placard-bearing crowds that continue to swell in number, each side shouting support for their rival concerns over the metal barriers erected to separate them.
At the front of one set of barriers, leading their number in the repetitive chant of “Free Jimmy Gow!” are three unwise men, Moe Larry, and Curly, better known to their work colleagues as The Three Stooges.
