Killer Love

KILLER LOVE

By Stephen Foehr

Jiri Vanek Publishing

Brno, CZ-EU

http://www.jirivanek.com

Copyright © 2012 Stephen Foehr

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, eletronicor mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online to mailto:sfoehr@indra.com.

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Cover art: Cupido Twins by the Corvo Brothers, Marco and Robert Muratore (Gonzago) Corvo. Cover design by Berger & Föhr.

Also by Stephen Foehr:

Fiction

Storyville, The Eternal Triangle of Love, Sex and Money

Nonfiction

Eco Journeys

On The Heart’s Edge, A Powerful Story of Love and Adventure in Africa

Taj Mahal, Autobiography of a Bluesman

Jamaican Warriors

Dancing with Fidel

Waking Up In Nashville

Walkin’ the Walk While Talkin’ the Law

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Simon, what do you make of this? Anthea hands her husband the note her dear friend Faiza had clandestinely slipped her that afternoon.

I must marry someone before I leave London on Monday. I’ll pay well. Meet me at the central marriage registrar’s office Friday 10 A.M. With a groom. It’s a matter of life or death.

Instructions.

What shall we do?

Three things you do with instructions: follow them, ignore them, or change them.

Until the surprise phone call the previous day, Anthea hadn’t heard from Faiza for six months, when she tearfully saw her friend off at the airport accompanying the body of her husband Ali al-Karmaic back to Tehran for burial. Their friendship developed after they met in an art history class at Oxford. Anthea was the sister Faiza wanted; and Faiza was the only friend Anthea trusted with her star-struck enthusiasm for Simon, an older man whom she met at his one-man show. He’s mad in the sense of William Blake and Lucian Freud and spiritual adepts, Anthea had gushed. He’s the only man in all of London, in all of England, I can marry and you must be my maid of honor.

Faiza marrying so soon after Ali al-Karmaic’s death mystifies Anthea. Now, rereading the note over Simon’s shoulder, she realizes the plea for help is a jailbreak.

How can we find a groom in twenty-four hours? she puzzles.

Call Jake, Simon advises.

Faiza is a friend of mine, Anthea objects.

Then call the Actors Guild and ask for a stand in.

You’re a horrible man, Simon.

A gaunt man, tall and knobby, with close-cropped hair and carefully tended stubble to give the hobo look, Simon is Anthea’s heartthrob. He once paid their gas bill, extravagant with fee increases, by painting a meticulous Barclays Bank check on a metal barrel. Then he delivered the payment hung on straps over his naked body. After handing over the check to the shocked clerk, he stood at the counter wiggling his bare bum until the police arrived.

Well done, don’t you think? he said to the officer escorting him away. Social commentary, politics and art in one package. Can’t tell truth from fiction, really. Art from reality. You from your reflection.

The policeman nodded, Very good, sir, and offered his helmet as a codpiece. Simon declined.

The Tate Modern purchased the barrel check and the price for his paintings skyrocketed.

Anthea told him that his act of art was the best sex she’d ever had.

Yes, I’m a horrible man, he agrees with his wife and flashes her a waggish grin. You’d have it no other way, my dear.

She knows the meaning of that grin, the signal that he has crossed the line from lucidity to lust. The first time this sudden transformation happened, on their second date, they were talking about Botticelli’s Primavera, which Simon described as an erotic adventure.

Those flowers coming out of Chloris’s mouth as she’s seized by Zephyrus, my God, imagine the passion of such a blooming, he enthused. Botticelli had a real love for the female form and for sensual beauty. And, as if inspired by the mere mention of Botticelli, he lunged at her. Acting with automatic reflex, Anthea bopped him on the nose.

I’ve been struck by Eros’s arrow! he cried. Come, sweet maiden, staunch my wound, and held out his arms to her. In that moment Anthea fell hopelessly in love with him, but she fled in mock terror, casting a coy glance over her shoulder to make sure he was in pursuit. Satyr-like, Simon pranced on tiptoes after her with mincing steps, flashing her the grin that would become their secret signal for steam rising.

Seeing that grin now, she edges away. Simon, this is not the time, she says holding up her hands to ward him off. But he’s on his toes. She runs around the kitchen table with him in hot pursuit. Her yelp of false fear burbles into laughter as she starts the second circuit around the table and he grabs the tail of her shirt.

Simon, she squeals with delight.

He lifts her off her feet. She kicks with glee while protesting that they have a serious matter to discuss, that Faiza is in trouble and needs their help. But she doesn’t resist as he lays her across the well-scrubbed oak table without removing the books for her research report for a private client or the teacups or the vase of flowers. Anthea is a highly sought after art appraiser serving private clientele whose names she can’t divulge for reasons of confidentiality and security.

I’ll sweep up the pieces later, he says and jerks off her pants.

"You are a lovely horrible man." Anthea sighs and clutches him so fiercely that his bad back nearly goes into spasms.

Later, after he sweeps up the broken crockery and reassembles the flowers and wipes up the water and collects Anthea’s books and papers and finds the pens that rolled under the frig, he puts on a kettle for fresh tea.

Now about that serious business, he says, satiated and pleased. How to arrange a quickie marriage in England between non-English non-citizens…

Faiza is a registered resident, having lived here with her husband. I’ll vouch for her so that shouldn’t be a problem, Anthea replies.

Simon adds, Jake’s been here long enough that he should have a residency card. I’ll stand in as his best man and sponsor.

Jake is an old pal, an American screenwriter who has never sold a script. He lives in a bedsitter with a hot plate, can’t afford haircuts, forgets to shave, has not bought a new article of clothing in nearly two years and is, in Simon’s words, a cynical optimist.

You always expect your ship to come in but never build the pier to tie it up, Simon said after Jake once made a successful pitch for a film idea, but never wrote the script.

Despite Anthea’s objection to Jake, she can’t think of someone else on so short notice. Simon makes the phone call.

Jake, I have a giggle for you that’ll make a good story.

What is it? Jake asks

The woman disappears. The man disappears.

That’s not a narrative. I need something with panning shots, close ups, long lens. Car crashes and hot sex. Murder and mystery.

The woman disappears. The man disappears with her money. Meet me for a pint and I’ll sketch it out.

Have to be later, say around eleven.

Got a date, do you?

Assignation.

When Jake doesn’t elaborate, Simon prods, Up to old games, are we? Although Jake never tells enough to betray confidence or cause alarm, Simon knows a bit about his being part the gangster Grace’s crew. About eleven then at the Crossroads. Take care, Jakey.

Jake hates being called Jakey. If anyone but Simon took such liberty there’d be a fistfight. He was christened John but at the age of twelve decided the pavid name, all soft sounds without edge, had no American flavor: he was watching a lot of John Wayne and Client Eastwood films at the time. He grew up on a small Illinois farm on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River and, believing the myths, looked to the West as the embodiment of America’s true character: the rugged individual, the loner who fights for good and justice and if that means side stepping the law, well then, that’s part of the Western square dance. Jake turned down Harvard and Yale for a paltry football scholarship to the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He wanted to learn to ride a horse. In the summers, he worked on a ranch, mostly digging fence postholes, and learned how to fight in cowboy bars –– rough but fair, except if your life was in danger; then good sense demanded sneaky and mean.

Appropriate for a Grace job, Jake dresses in black to be as invisible as possible. He never knows what Grace will throw at him, professionally and personally. That unspoken fine print is the excitement in their relationship.

He’s at curbside when Bernie, Grace’s lieutenant, pulls up in a non-descript white van. What’s on? Jake asks, climbing in.

Repo.

Jake groans. Those jobs inevitably carry hard feelings, and often the threat of physical danger.

No worries. The mark is going to a nightclub. We’ll snatch the car out of the lot. No argo or bother.

Said the pig to the butcher, replies Jake and Bernie chuckles at his attempt of Cockney humor.

We’re the butchers on this one, mate.

The club is a renovated Docklands warehouse. Having no name and the pretense of being hard to find gives it cachet among the moneyed trendies and the newly famous. There’s no announcing neon on the worn brick walls, only a single dim bulb over the street door. The giveaway is the side lot full of expensive autos.

What are we looking for? Jake asks.

Bentley Continental Supersports convertible. White with extra bling.

Who’s the owner?

Duh Dude.

The rapper?

The deadbeat. Can’t pay and can’t sing either, in my measured opinion, Bernie says while easing the van down the rows of cars.

How do we do this?

Bernie motions to the glove box. Grace always keeps an extra set of keys.

Jake digs out the keys from the tumble of papers, a wrench, flashlight, two packs of cigarettes and a snub-nose revolver. Bit risky having this. Jake spins the chamber to see if the gun is loaded. If coppers stop you.

Little extra precaution for tonight. Duh Dude usually has a bodyguard as an accessory. Makes him feel important.

They wind through the lot without spotting the Bentley. Jake is relieved but asks, Do we wait? hoping Bernie’s tip is wrong.

There’s a VIP entrance behind the building. We’ll go look. Bernie parks the van and takes the gun from Jake and tucks it in the back of his pants.

Jake doesn’t mind a dustup –– been in plenty and started a few –– but the possibility of gunfire makes him nervous. His Western persona –– the flinty look, the rugged jaw, the just-got-off-the-bucking-bronco swagger –– doesn’t extend to high-noon gunfights, although he has a long-barrel Colt .45, the iconic Old West Equalizer. He uses it in his cowboy act that he performs when desperate for money.

At the rear of the building, Bernie peeks around the corner. Right. Get the keys in hand.

When they step out Bernie spots the bodyguard standing a respectful fifteen feet from the car, the convertible top up and tinted windows closed. Stay back, he puts a hand on Jake’s chest, until I divert the big boy’s attention.

Bernie approaches the man with comrade-in-thugship good cheer, two working stiffs out in the cold while their masters revel with good whiskey and beautiful women. After cautious words, the bodyguard, a huge block of muscle –– Bernie pencil thin in comparison –– relaxes and accepts Bernie’s invitation to a drink from the hip flask. They turn to the brick wall so not to be seen drinking on the job. Jake, silent and fast, covers the twenty feet to the car. He jerks open the driver’s door and a body falls out. Catching the man under the arm before he hits the pavement, Jake is surprised by the blonde raising her head from the guy’s crotch, white drool hanging off her chin.

What the motherfuck! The guy stares up at Jake and tries to twist free as he’s being dragged across the front seat.

The woman screams and grabs his feet to keep him in the car, but Jake has him on the ground.

At the sound of the scuffle, the bodyguard spins from the wall ready to go on the job. Bernie jabs his revolver into the man’s spine. Hands on the wall. We just want the car so don’t be a hero.

Duh Dude puts up a mighty fuss until Jake drops a knee on the guy’s neck to hold him still.

I’ll kill you. KILL YOU! MOTHERFUCKER. You know who you’re disrespecting here? Duh Dude’s eyes blaze hatred. I’ll hunt you down and stuff you alive through a meat grinder, you stupid fuck.

Putting his full weight on the Duh Dude’s throat, Jake reaches down and squeezes his balls. Shut up. You didn’t pay your bill. That’s disrespectful. Now I’m taking your car.

The blonde scrambles from the front seat, ready to attack Jake.

Your man’s in an awkward spot. Jake sounds like a vet discussing a sick dog. You don’t want to endanger him. Take his belt and tie his ankles together.

Dude? She looks to the bodyguard and sees no help. Dude?

Do it, Jake commands, or Dude will be singing falsetto.

Duh Dude tries to shout threats from under Jake’s knee but can only huff.

The blonde finishes binding his ankles together. Now go, Jake tells her. She walks backwards and then turns and runs.

So, dude, Jake looks down at the face puffed with the effort to breathe. Easing off the throat, he keeps a firm grip on the testicles. You need to stay where you are so I don’t accidentally run over you. And if you shout out, that might startle my friend causing him to accidentally shoot your hulk. Jake nods towards the bodyguard spread eagle against the wall. You understand the safety issues here?

You’re a dead man, Duh Dude croaks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jake stands. Look at it this way, I just gave you great material for a song. He slides into the car. The keys are in the ignition. Starting the engine, Jake lowers the window to see Duh Dude on the ground. By the way, you can’t sing for shit. He puts the car in reverse and waits until Bernie is safely away before leaving the parking lot.

Jake and Bernie drive in tandem to the warehouse where Grace stashes her goods. She always has on hand one or two very expensive autos, plus the one she drives. Once when delivering a Rolls, Jake cautiously asked Bernie how Grace could deal the cars with apparent impunity.

They don’t exist. There’s no record that they were ever built. Grace, Bernie sketchily explained, has accomplices in the manufacturing plants. Computer men. Grace places an order, the car is built but it’s never registered in the system. Phantom cars.

Grace’s warehouse is truly obscure in a derelict area by the Thames. All the windows are boarded up. There are no exterior lights. The sliding door, large enough to admit a good-sized lorry, appears rusted in place. But it moves quickly and silently when Bernie presses the remote. Jake follows the van inside the warehouse, the space clean and orderly with ranks of steel shelving crammed with number-coded boxes identifying the stolen goods. Jake parks the Bentley near the office in a rear corner. Bernie’s at the desk computer filing the information, white cat, no tail, meaning the white Bentley has been recovered with no trouble, and the date. Grace uses encrypted code to track her shadow business from her legitimate office in the city.

Well done, mate. Bernie allows himself a grin. We make a good team.

Tell Grace to give me a bonus.

And a promotion?

No, just cash.

As they drive away from the warehouse, Jake directs Bernie to the Crossroads pub. If you’re in no hurry I could use some help with another errand, Bernie says.

Would like to but can’t help you out. Jake, having enough criminal risk for one night, would have made up an excuse even if Simon hadn’t been waiting. Got myself a friend.

Pulling to the curb, Bernie says, Hope she’s a sweet friend.

You know how I like chocolate, Jake replies, hopping out of the van.

Simon’s at the bar working on his first pint when Jake takes the seat next to him. He signals the barkeep for a lager.

Was she sweet? Simon asks.

And smooth, Jake pulls the full glass to him.

Hope she’s not disappointed, you quitting early.

Seeing I never started that’s not a problem.

Simon knows to leave it alone. Here’s the deal, and conveys Faiza’s offer of marriage for cash.

Sounds like a bit of desperation. Jake drains half his lager. He hasn’t done enough criminal jobs for Grace to be blasé and needs a steadying crutch. Normally he does couriering, sometimes taking a sealed briefcase handcuffed to his wrist across to Paris or Brussels or Amsterdam, where a man with the right code word unlocks the cuffs. When an extra hand is needed, he helps to shift goods. Simple, low-risk stuff. Grace doesn’t want to put him in harm’s way.

Do we have to live together?

Appear together, at least for a while.

Do I have to fuck her?

You’ll want to.

But would she?

Can’t say, can I? Might help if you bought new clothes –– and get a haircut and shave.

She’s Muslim? Don’t they have proscriptions? Do they ever take their clothes off?

They wear Victoria Secret under the drabness.

How much will she pay?

How much you want? You’re in a good bargaining position.

Friday morning?

That’s the day after tomorrow. Gives you time to rent a tux.

I’ve never been married.

You’ve never sold a screenplay, either. Might be the start of a streak.

What’s it like being married, Simon?

Delightful. An adventure. Full of good plot lines and narratives. Terrific dialogue, stuff you can’t make up.

How long? I mean, how long do I need to be married to this person?

Probably a year. You have to be available to show up when needed.

I don’t know, Simon. There’re complications.

Always are.

Jake doesn’t want to queer things with Grace. One reason he’s available for her jobs is that he owes her money and she is a meticulous bookkeeper; has to be to keep both sets of books straight. And then there are the accounts stored in her head, which worry Jake the most because they contain more than just figures. Besides, he likes her, more than likes her. The relationship is a bit of tie-me-up-tie-me-down, the winning or losing equally exciting. But Jake knows Grace is danger and he’s not a danger junkie. Jake is a fear junkie.

He realized this the first time a woman said she loved him; and the first time he tried to write a screenplay. With women, he creates the smokescreen of an ardent romantic and slips away before they discover he’s all smoke and no fire; with the writing he spends more time plotting camera angles than he does blowing himself up so the characters can emerge from the rubble.

Jake has perfected the craft of romance as a diversion from the skill of commitment. He’s always been a man on the run scattering rose petals to cover his muddy tracks. Pop psychologists label Jake’s type as suffering from fear of intimacy, but that’s not how he sees it: he frames his condition as fear of lost possibilities. How close he can come to losing control to the woman is his secret thrill. Where’s the edge and how does he stay the right distance from the liminal of abandonment of all that’s rational?

Jake’s favorite game with himself is to imagine dangling from a parachute and slipping one arm out of the harness. Toying with the sensation of free falling gives him an adrenalin rush. When he saw the pictures of people leaping from the burning Twin Towers, he stared in heart-in-mouth awe. Did they, in that moment, experience a giddy surrender as they twirled and plunged from the horror of burning alive to being smashed pulp? Did they see, with devastating clarity, God’s behemoth lips puckering for a full-on smack? Did they laugh with relief? Accept with grace the inevitable?

Part of the allure of Grace is getting into a fistfight knowing the other guy might pull a knife. He has to stay alert and sharp to his fear, push the boundaries while controlling the danger.

He once told Grace he loved her.

That word is a marshmallow in your mouth, she retorted.

He never uttered the word again, at least in a personal context.

The marriage to Faiza doesn’t require love. That’s what makes it so enticing, that and a payday to finance his film, pay off Grace, buy a car, and never kiss another producer’s arse.

Chapter 2

Faiza has twenty-fours in which to slip her minders, Muna and Hamza. And that will be no easy feat.

Hamza is trained in martial arts, weapons, explosives, stalking, intimidation and ruthless brutality. A strapping young man with an untrimmed beard and black scimitar eyebrows, he moves with the grace of smoke. He could be a dancer, that was Faiza’s first impression, and his eyes, when not so stern, have the potential to bewitch. But his ardent belief in the righteous sword of Allah makes him forbidding and unlikable. He speaks to her only when necessary, and then usually as a warning to obey his commands.

Faiza shares a room with Muna, a young woman with a suspicious mind and quick eyes. Trained in martial arts as well as weapons and surveillance, better muscled and stronger than Faiza, Muna has a lovely unblemished face with round cheeks –– not the flat, high cheekbones that make men stare at Faiza’s beauty –– and a thin straight nose, which Faiza envies. Jealous girls seeking a flaw in Faiza’s beauty called her Hawkbeak. She treats Faiza as a professional task, showing steadfast attention to details but remaining indifferent to her charge. Yet Faiza senses the kinship of womanhood in Muna. To encourage a sisterly comradeship, Faiza makes herself lighthearted and gay, an excited bride-to-be, when alone with Muna.

The day before, Faiza had rung Anthea. I’m getting married and need a trousseau. You must show me the newest shops. Faiza kept her voice bright with false girlish delight. I need a wedding night negligee to wear under the burka.

Anthea got tangled in the mention of a burka; the Faiza she remembered would never hide herself. I can hardly wait to hear all about it, she said with good cheer to cover her confusion. Let’s meet tomorrow at Ah! and pick out the honeymoon seduction. Simon will be pleased to see you again.

Faiza was relieved to see Anthea waiting in front of Ah!. And Anthea was delighted as she watched her friend coming down Sloane Street wearing a swishing above-the-knee dress suitable for the spring weather. She appeared to be the same vibrant Faiza with a bounce in her walk and her long raven-black hair framing her beaming face.

At her elbow a figure draped in black from head to foot matched her stride for stride. Beneath the burka the woman wore running shoes and jeans to better chase, and catch, Faiza should she bolt.

Faiza rushed into her sister-in-heart arms. My dear, dear friend, she exclaimed, laughing with relief. This, she turned to the concealed figure, is one of my minders, Muna. What you can see of her. Anthea nodded, unsure whether to extend her hand. The woman made no gesture of welcome. The other minder, with a beard, is lurking around here somewhere.

Hamza slipped into a doorway so not to be seen.

Anthea gave Faiza a quizical look at the word minders-- someone who guards, who looks after, who prevents someone