“Vitruvian Man”
a novel
by
Ben Campbell
Published by Ben Campbell at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Ben Campbell
Discover other titles by Ben Campbell at Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition License Notes
ISBN # 978-1-4524-3980-8
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Chapter 1
A DEAD body to me is just that, a corpse, a lifeless animal decomposing. How it gets that way is what troubles me.
Thousands of people assembled tonight in Cannes, France. Many came to adore celebrities, kiss butts and singe their minds with alcohol and drugs. I came to steal jewelry.
I was back stage in a hotel theater near the door in the shadows. Three stagehands mingled behind the curtains. My tux was appropriate attire. It blended with my Keith Urban hair as well as my four days beard growth and eye lids that I had tinged with black mascara.
A large security guard dressed in a navy blue uniform blended in the darkened, wide corridor where presenters straighten their attire before making appearances on stage. The evening of theatrics had ended. Post-theatrics had begun with wealthy crack-heads, sugar-daddies, hammers, weasels, all in their rooms changing for the after-parties. The audience had half-emptied out through theater doors into the lobby and then to the street, where shoulder-squeezing combined with pretense-kissing were required.
The stagehands left the area walking down a long hallway. I approached the obese guard, snatching the small cardboard box from his hands. His job was to protect the jewels inside the box. My job was to take them.
The guard charged at me. His fat fingers fumbled at the flat jewelry container in my hands. I dumped it inside my tuxedo jacket.
“Fuck you,” he growled in my face.
My alpha rhythm quadrupled. He was a pig made to squeal. Situations like this made my job exciting.
I jammed a thumb against the guard’s temple. His portly mug cringed and his eyes crossed. Then his then lips caved-in. His bulbous stomach fell first. His knees buckled, his face slammed against the wood floor. The pig was down. Some rivals go down easy, the defiant resist. This man was unconscious and spread-eagled face down. Backstage silence was deafening. This was act one and I’d have to hurry before intermission started.
I pulled out my trusty Swiss knife then slit the backside of the guard’s droopy pants. A spandex girdle underneath held him together. I cut the garment, lowered the boxer shorts to his plumber’s crack, spreading the materials outward over his hips.
My impromptu moves impressed me. Being a well-educated, socially adjusted person, I always laughed at people’s misfortunes, but I had to withhold my outburst in this quiet ambiance.
I checked my jacket pocket making sure the jewelry box was still there. The stage door was three feet away. A hard object slapped the backside of my neck.
The pistol barrel slid down my back like a saw cutting wood. One hand from behind took my shoulder, whipping me around. The hand was dark with two thick parallel scars across the top. The second hand gripped the gun handle, jamming the barrel against my heart. He opened my jacket, stashing his hand into my inner-pocket.
I notice hands first. Sometimes they reveal professions, mostly they reveal dispositions. I seek eyes second. They reveal intentions. I knew this deceitful wanker. Shave the head of a young Omar Sheriff and Iktar Stanktar could be his brother. He’d once told me he was brave and daring. I saw him as a stupid killer.
The Kahr P45 pistol bulldozed my chest. His left hand found the treasure in my jacket pocket. A victory smirk split his brown wafer lips. His eyes examined the box.
The white teeth, chapped lips with an ugly scar zipped across the bottom of the moron’s chin. Iktar Stanktar was branded a terrorist by authorities. The man had no covert identity or undisclosed headquarters. He was ubiquitous, traveling wherever he wanted. However, his main residence was somewhere in Iran. His status as a villain was a burlesque to vicious antics.
He was a man after my heart. In a previous confrontation when he’d won the better of me. His body guards ripped my shirt open and he carved a large X across my chest with his signature opal handled switch-blade. He wanted to scare me, not kill me. I recall the exquisite handle on his knife. That was the instrument I’d wanted to plunge into his neck.
Tonight Iktar made a major mistake.
He pulled a pistol. I knew he wouldn’t fire the weapon backstage during the Cannes Film Festival. The world was watching. The French Secret Service, a thousand celebrities and ten thousand admiring citizens were mingling outside on the boulevard.
My left nostril dripped blood. My nose would bleed when I was under stress. The damage to the cartilage was from a fork to my palate by Iktar two years ago when he blind-sided me. He was after a golden goblet I had fetched from a church, like he was after the jeweled necklace now. He didn’t get the goblet then, he wouldn’t get the necklace now.
“You won’t shoot me,” I whispered in Iktar’s ear.
“Test me, Alexander Crown. You’d better wipe the blood from your nose before it stains your tux.”
“What’s your exit strategy?”
His dark, ruthless eye angled into mine. He didn’t have an exit strategy.
He was lucky I wasn’t in my kill zone when I crack heads open like walnuts or when I pluck eyes from sockets like picking cherries. He had one eye because of me. He was lucky I could barely see its emotion.
“You’ll always be a stupid fucker, Iktar.”
He thought I was stealing from his heist, a six and half million dollar diamond and emerald necklace. I didn’t know he’d be here attempting the same theft.
The jewels adorned the delightful neck of Dandelion Diaz, the voluptuous Spanish actress who had returned the decadent necklace fifteen minutes ago to the security guard.
On this Saturday evening at midnight, confronted by an asswipe, I snatched the Kahr pistol from the hand of the tuxedoed Iktar then dropped it to the floor.
I shoved his face back with an elbow punch. With the cracking of his nose Iktar’s head whipped backwards. His disgusting dentures popped out of his mouth then flew over my head.
For the second time tonight I snatched the jewelry box from a second pair of hands and stashed it inside my jacket pocket. A second later, like a sledgehammer, my palm came down on Iktar’s broken nose.
He lay on his back next to the guard. The situation was bad. I’d come here tonight to heist jewelry, not injure anybody.
I stood over Iktar like a movie director.
“I’ll give you five seconds, dipstick, to pull your pants down to your ankles.”
Beneath me, blood and sweat soaked the offending face of my enemy.
“Fuck you,” he lisped.
“Fuck you back.” I smirked; knowing my fuck you had more credibility.
A surge of pressure picked at my left foot. Iktar stuck his switch-blade through my pant leg and boot into my ankle. I bent down, jerking the knife from his hand and his wrist snapped. He squealed like a scared pig. At least I got a yelp out of somebody.
I wiped some blood from my nose onto my left shoulder.
Any disparaging actions I took now would come back at me later, but I couldn’t help myself. I plunged two-inches of the six-inch knife blade into the side of Iktar’s neck. Shock and awe muted the creep. He was conscious yet inert. I turned him over. His switchblade fell from his neck wound. Blood trickled on the floor. I picked the knife up. The opal handle was warm. I sliced down the backside of his pants, as I did to the fat guard, and pulled his pants down around his knees.
An idea of gloom about dragging a half-naked man atop another half-naked man made me laugh. I think it was the poopy poker aspect about it that bothered me. I dropped his body face down on top of the guard’s flotilla ass.
They looked like Beavis and Butt-head. Two weirdoes engaged in an illicit affair under the shadows in the wide hallway area close to the backstage door.
I was on the door knob when a man’s voice from behind me spoke with an Italian accent.
“What happened?”
The shadowed man was six meters away, standing on the other side of the bodies. Knobby muscles stretched his tux. The military flat-top specified a menacing attitude. The bodies on the floor took his attention. My lips cracked open.
“Lovers quarrel?” I said.
Behind the big man at shoulder height was a pair of eyes glistening in the dark. I couldn’t see the head or body they belonged to, and I wasn’t staying around to be introduced.
I felt more like a murderer, however humanitarian I was. I needed a speedy get-a-way. My Kawasaki was parked on the boulevard at the end of the alley.
I opened the door and it jammed against a heavy object on the floor. A dead man’s head lay in a pool of blood. The body was fresh and dressed in a tux.
Perhaps forty years of age, he was a small, trim corpse. His life was cut short. What troubled me was how he got that way. His dark hair needed trimming. That was no longer a concern for him.
I heaved the door open, sliding the body across the floor. A heavy thump sound cut the silence. Iktar’s pistol had plopped off the dead man’s chest.
A woman’s sharp scream filled my ears. A tall hourglass figure in a short skirt came in to view from behind the flat-top haircut. One hand came forward and covered her mouth. Another hand on a shoulder pulled her back. Whether she was in shock or playacting wasn’t my concern. After all, the Cannes Film Festival was all about role playing.
My job was complete. I didn’t want to be arrested for murder. When I jumped in the alley outside, a plastic clatter hit the pavement.
The heavy metal stage door behind me slammed shut. The muscled man wasn’t coming after me. I was thankful because my kill zone was boiling over, that would be disastrous for my opponent.
I looked overhead. The weather was warm, the air humid. The sky was lit up like a 4th of July celebration. That rocked my socks and I threw my arms overhead in triumph.
My ankle ached from the stab wound. I’d either have to buy a new pair of dress boots or credit Iktar’s knife slice as a character flaw.
I straightened my tux. Stepped forward I felt a crunch underneath my foot. Overhead fireworks exploded. The light splashed on Iktar’s dentures next to my feet.
My smile was genuine. Any hearty laughter was a long time coming. I hesitated for a few seconds before I stomped on the fake teeth. Being in control was good.
I wiped another drop of blood off my nose. At the main boulevard I looked back down the alley like a kid who’d just won a crucial fight, beating up the school bully, humiliating him in front of his gang.
While I walked down the alley I thought about how Iktar’s nomad antics accumulated personal wealth by selling weapons to third world countries for Russia. He was a senseless killer. What rocked his world was purging life from innocent bystanders with double-bladed knives, Russian handguns and grenades. I avoided the imbecile by any means possible. Stabbing him in the neck seemed appropriate. If I injured him as a result, I knew some lateral damage was done.
On the flipside of that I’m not a murderer like Iktar Stanktar. I’m a philanthropist. Because of that I’m a charitable whore of humanitarian proportions, so great that death means nothing to me except for the death of the greedy.
Plucking out hearts, slicing jugular veins, blasting out brains at close pistol range wasn’t part of my reputation like Iktar’s. Any damage I did was for philanthropic reasons. I’d made donations to charities and will continue to give as long as I survive, as long as nobody plucks out my heart or splatters my brains on a wall.
Iktar Stanktar was trash in the judgment of civilized governments, and an angel in the eyes of brutal third world nations. We were competitors in the field of jewelry thievery and other crimes of the wallet. He wanted me out of his picture. I told him to Photoshop me out. That was the way he’d get rid of me.
The mercenary antics in Iktar’s past were products of his acid childhood. They were always in opposition to mine. He slaughtered the good guys and I defeated the bad guys. He murdered with skill. He tortured and raped young and old women. His twisted affairs spanned Africa, South America, Australia, the near east, China and North Korea.
The world could live without Iktar Stanktar the savage, an executioner, a terrorist whose time is ripe. Not even the despots that hired his services would mourn him.
When I was young I’d play a solitary game as being Alexander the Great, the King of Freedom, the conqueror of the deceitful. I never wanted to be a celebrated person, just a small time genius helping people emerge from poverty. The multi-million dollar necklace in my pocket would help me achieve some of my goals.
Chapter 2
I’D BEEN tortured several times while on missions over my mercenary career of eighteen years. One time I was shot in the shoulder and left to die in the mountains of Croatia. Another time I’d been arrested in Bolivia, hogtied, blindfolded, starved and threatened with rape until I caved in and informed on my employer. I’d hunkered down in a cave for three days in North Korea before their search and seizure team left fruitless. This time I was stabbed in the ankle but it didn’t hamper my escape.
Just before I limped onto the boulevard where the lavish parties begin after the Cannes Film Festival, where careers are spiked, actors, directors, starlets, and junkies get dumped, I stopped to collect my composure. I looked down the alley and watched a Range Rover drive in my direction and stop by the theater stage door. My curiosity ended when I stomped on Iktar’s dentures outside that door, so I ignored the SUV, slid around the corner, leaned against the brick building and merged with celebrity merrymaking.
I pulled out the jewelry box from inside my jacket, opened the lid and lifted out a black velvet bag. I dropped the box on the asphalt and stepped on it. Taking the necklace from the soft bag would amplify my thrill, so I let the velvet massage the jewels and stashed it inside my jacket pocket.
An internal tornado swirled my emotions. Cut and run wasn’t my specialty. Being a peaceful critter was difficult considering my past mercenary life. I needed to catch my breath, but not examine the details of the assault or my theft.
The after party was a freaky circus on the sidewalk and street in front of the Martinez Hotel this last Sunday night of le festival de Cannes. Hundreds of plastic people meandered about alive with drunken, drugged madness. They were polished and primed for sin where grabbing ass and tongue throat dredging was meant for the boudoir.
Under the bruised sky pimps publicized their goods, gays made connections, transvestites demonstrated and movie mongers sucked up the social bacteria.
Off the shoreline, in midnight darkness the Mediterranean Sea sizzled beneath five dozen moored yachts alight with fabulous, pretentious, crack head fuck-gatherings. A dozen cruisers anchored, sporting skanks and terrorists spreading herpes, pigs and scoundrels donating ecstasy and heroin, all celebrations for herds of wildebeests feasting and hyenas foraging.
Cannes Film Festival
Smoky, wicked air filtered my lungs. The evening was crammed with car exhaust, cannabis burn, alcohol, all soothing and agitating. I coughed and looked overhead. Few stars were visible within the glossy environment. The relative humidity was at least fifty percent. My wetness was from the excitement backstage, not from the confrontation with the fat guard or Iktar Stanktar, and not from the woot electricity of the festival, but from the dead body on the floor by the stage door.
The annoying chatter and disconnected music saturating the busy air were indistinguishable reassurances that all was well. That the glossy lunacy of the evening was just perfect.
Conversations flooded my ears like multiple radio waves. Rap tunes squeezed the street from within various venues inside the buildings lining the famous boulevard.
Wasted and drugged, anorexic and preset, connected and convoluted, was the ideal recipe for the night. I fit in the mix. The difference between me and them was that I possessed a multimillion dollar necklace and they commanded attention.
My ankle tingled and my foot was blood wet. The sidewalk and street heaved up and down with body heat and unchecked laughter but I didn’t care. I raised my leg, took my boot off and rolled down my sock. The knife puncture was a sideways slice behind my ankle bone. My Achilles tendon was saved.
“Oh fuck, are you alright?” A familiar looking dark suited loafer glanced my way, his accent was British and his face was balanced with stardom.
“A shot of tequila could cure anything right now.”
The handsome man smiled. He was an actor. A slacker whose name most wouldn’t remember. He hesitated, and then chucked his entire cold drink over my cut.
I cringed. “You just made the world a better place.”
“That’s my motive in life,” he said, and looked back at his groupies.
“I meant a shot of tequila to drink, not dump on my injury.”
“Now it’s disinfected.”
“Are you with them?” I asked, pointing to his fans.
“Yeah, but I’d rather be with you.”
We smiled and he rejoined his group.
I rolled up my sock and pulled on my boot, sniffed alcohol in the air, and was amused at the endless sucking up that surrounded me.
The emotional stimulation intoxicated me. Yet escaping the iconic environment was a necessity. Being conspicuous to hundreds of dry-humping dragons and high from the rousing night resembled a Swedish massage in battery acid.
I moved around the crowd of volatile celebrities. They were beautiful, and they were ugly, cosmetically prepared for the Cannes occasion, dressed to kill and on the hardcore autobahn to decadence and emotional depravity.
They were dressed to their own desire; tuxedoes, gowns, jewelry, jeans and lavish tops of all styles. The street was a circus filled with animals, and they were humans. They were there for less than fifteen minutes of fame.
Two thousand beautiful yet obnoxious people to me were clowns and psychos, drug addicts and alcoholics, sexual perverts and felons. The secret was to blend in and not crash the proceedings. I was right at home. The vast difference between them and me was sobriety. I knew my place in the world and they were lost souls.
The noises were irritants, yet all was dissociating like a sexy eulogy celebrating abstinence. The film festival was all about sex, not as in love, but lewd, retro-cringe sex. However turned on I was, my night wasn’t about annotated, muddled sex, it was about a lucrative heist, expensive jewelry that would help finance my orphanage and other philanthropic activities.
I meandered down the street to where my rented Kawasaki ZR-12R Ninja was parked. The social circles ignored me except for one woman. Not blending in with the commotion was her reason to tag me. Her raccoon eyes followed me. A mask of thick Amy Winehouse mascara spiced her world.
I loved European woman. They were poised, and without a moment’s notice they could be Fess-bians—drama mamas. I wasn’t adverse to that. I encouraged drama for a type of roll-playing to foster buoyancy.
The young woman stood at least fifteen meters away from my Kawasaki. She specked me out like a piece of steak in a meat market. I examined her. Two manicured hands were the first appendage I saw, one held a small purse the other twisted around a short glass.
The first rate figure was crowded in a mini black leather skirt, a thin white top covered with a red leather jacket. The next appendage I saw was a stretched leg moving toward me. The skin glistened in the light. Her red heel was seductive. I smiled to myself and she grimaced but didn’t look away. She characterized my face and calculated my moves. I memorized her evening face that resembled Isabelle Adjani, the beautiful French actress who starred in the movie Nosferatu the Vampyre.
Everything about the lovely package spoke of privilege, waste and extreme decadence. I imagined she smelled of green money, blue diamonds and red Ferraris. A Hollywood movie camera would sabotage this girl oozing fashion and Pop Culture.
She couldn’t ignore my height of one point eight seven nine meters, and weight of ninety-five kilograms in a black tailored monkey suit. I wasn’t uncommon and I didn’t look different from the other men, with wavy shoulder length brown hair and five day bearded face. My physicality was quite perspicacious that couldn’t be ignored and she didn’t disregard me.
Her wavy brunette Juliette was parted to one side and draped over her left shoulder. Getting closer to examine her mug wasn’t protocol, so I kept my distance. Her face stood out with full red lips, piercing eyes, perhaps brown in color, but the darkened evening and black mascara camouflaged that effect. Her full, yet thin figure encouraged reconnaissance.
I saddled up on the Kawasaki and stared at the gas tank. Had I been too blunt a few minutes ago with the fat fuck guard backstage? Had I killed Iktar by knifing him in the neck? He was my opposition and I would love to have killed him. Not because of him, but because I now possessed a six and one half million-dollar diamond and emerald necklace I would sell on the open market.
When the young woman looked back to her group I pulled the necklace out of the velvet bag. The huge gems glistened under dull lighting. The length and thick design in gold, diamonds and emeralds was gorgeous. The chain anchored twenty-two one carat diamonds, each one flanked by a one carat emerald. Examining it was a necessity but now wasn’t prime-time. I put opulent piece of jewelry back in the bag and into my jacket pocket.
The concept of acquiring the necklace came from Matheiu Dewaere, my favorite French actor who stared in the movie, Frenchmen Never Die. He had befriended me at a charity party two years ago when he told me about the expensive jewelry celebrities wear at the Cannes. He said, after celebrities display the jewels at movie premiers, the most beautiful designs would appear as duplicates on retail shelves. That’s a way of creating jewelry trends for commoners.
After I had read that Dandelion Diaz would be wearing this necklace I requested an invitation to the Cannes from Dewaere, telling him I was in pursuit of acting lessons. He laughed and said he’d hook me up. However, planning on stealing the necklace took precedence. I should have known Iktar Stanktar would have staged a similar game.
I frowned at the young, beautiful woman leaving her group of partygoers. She shot toward me. The piercing eyes of the flat-top man standing beside her followed her departure. The shorter man who poured liquor over my ankle stood behind him ignoring them.
The woman was a stocker. Just why I decided that was an anomaly in my judgment. A woman that striking couldn’t be an assassin or subversive, but she could be an insidious spy. I detested menacing undercover agents. They were nuisances. This one who was sassy had so much to live for.
Although I didn’t watch them, the red stilettos clicked on the cement like castanets. I started the motorcycle’s engine. The powerfully sweet whine was what I liked to hear from a naked woman in bed beneath me.
The heels clicked faster and louder, a Flamenco dancer coming at me like thunder, softening the engine whine and vociferous human chatter that surrounded the marina.
The stocker victimized my face, and stirred leopardess in drunken suspension. Her eyes froze onto mine with intent of seduction, I surmised.
She stopped, kneeled and put her glass on the sidewalk. When she stood up a small knife appeared in one delicate hand and a tiny black leather purse was in the other. She was the textbook piece of misdirection, and I was her destination.
I’d been warned many times by male operatives to beware of aggressive women bearing weapons. I knew too well how impractical, controlling and narcissistic they were. Without weapons they would be impractical, controlling and selfish.
I zipped the motorcycle forward and braked. She paused and made a decision.
She was a Betty Boop stop and go hot comet, and she stood on the spot where I’d been. She knew what I was doing—teasing a child with candy, in this case with a six and a half million dollar diamond and emerald necklace.
She opened her small purse and made sure I’d seen her drop the knife inside of it. She zipped the purse closed and made eye contact with me. I nodded my head in acceptance.
Her stance was hypnotic. Most women would kill for her Miss Universe figure. Many women would steal for the sleek muscular calves. All women would commit genocide for such an enticing, gorgeous face.
Her partner with the flat-top haircut was a watchdog, a sentinel of sorts. The hordes of people surrounding him were engaged in the decadence of drinking, exhibiting, promoting, soliciting, slouching and smoking. I wanted to join them but was preoccupied. I listened to the chatter with hotel lighting spewing over the environment.
I wandered if her man would come and put one hand over her mouth, another on her shoulder, and whisk her back to the party. He didn’t, not yet anyway.
Fascinated by the silent wiggle in her gait…left-right, left-right, my eyes summed her up. Her steps stretched one in front of the other like a seasoned runway model. Her ass was a musical metronome swishing back and forth. Smooth rhythm propelled her forward. My summation of her was eidetic. She was a halogenation—a phantom I couldn’t ignore.
She stood on the curb beside me, doing the stanky leg, changing out the left leg in front of the right and back again. Her alcoholic eyes inspected my face. Expression of surprise had me worried. She was either pleased with my appearance or she conceptualized me as a dipshit. I knew those eyes as the glistening ones I had seen minutes ago back stage.
The brown eyes fluttered with interest and tease.
“I love your motorcycle. Black and red are my colors,” she said.
With lips quivering her eyelids fluttered. Intoxication took control of her movements. The motorcycle was the last thing on her mind.
Her delicious French accent stripped both of us naked and planted me in bed underneath her, where I smothered my senses in her purring voice—a duplicate whine of my motorcycle engine. If I thought for one second she’d be worth the trouble, I’d pursue that position. She possessed the dirty little magic, the sexual weapon and I felt impractical, controlling and narcissistic.
The tip of her tongue parted her rose-red lips and remained suspended between them.
Her sensual body captivated me, and I was thrilled with what she left unsaid.
“Red and black match blood and death,” I replied.
“You are American,” she stated. “Americans disgust me.”
“Not as much as the French disgust me.”
She listened like winter and spoke like springtime. Her eyes darted from my shoulder to my nose.
“There’s something wet on your nose and shoulder.”
She went to touch the tip of my nose and I jerked away from her finger.
“Take me for a ride? Please.” She pouted the words into my ears like a sex starved alley cat.
The spoiled brat that she was, convinced me not to give in one inch much less feel her breasts rubbing against my back on a bumpy road. I continued to look at her like oil on water.
The view over the handlebars of the Kawasaki was filled with party goers, and I held that vision for a few seconds deciding what I should do. I scanned the besotted siren’s eyes. They squinted and schemed. If she had winked I would have melted on the hot pavement like a scoop of ice cream.
“There’s this cute town up the road called Antibes. We could go for fries and cognac,” I said.
She absorbed my smile with diplomacy, and changed her pouty face to entrapment.
“I would rather go to the Monte-Carlo Grand Casino. Steak and champagne is my choice.”
She hugged the air with open arms.
Like I expected, she was after the necklace not me. She wanted bling not romance. And she would embrace sex with me and heist the jewels off my dead, bloody body.
“What’s with the knife?” I asked.
“I had a splinter.”
“Show me.”
The castanets clicked on the cement. That language was a warning for me to back off.
Her shimmering legs quivered in the night light. Climbing between them would be suicide. There was no end of things in my heart.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The stocker’s face turned cold. She wanted jewels not personal introduction.
I popped the Kawasaki clutch and my ride jumped forward.
“Isabella Borghini. The knife is for personal protection.”
“Are you Italian or French?”
“I’m Italian with a French accent.
I coasted backward and braked beside Isabella Borghini. Was she my new friend or my nastiest enemy?
“Isabella Borghini,” I whispered under my breath. “I like Italians more than French.”
She was setting me up to break me down. Her bait was too tempting not to nibble at. Like an epigraphy, I had to decipher her body language, and taste more of her French accent.
The party of people continued around us. Loud voices spit laughter way too apparent. Champagne and beer overflowed, and the air of intelligence and stupidity intermingled.
Isabella and I went silent. Her lips puckered. I lingered. Her body softened. I went rigid. We had reached an impasse.
She looked at her purse. I looked at her manicured hands. She gazed at the sliver scar on my left cheek. I glanced at her legs. She glared at me looking at her legs. She spread them apart. I raised my eyebrows as my entire body was a hot-box.
My lips parted and words dangled inside the edges.
Her lips parted and her tongue lingered between them.
“What are your secrets?” I said.
Isabella looked over my head at a small group of drunken actors. I didn’t look away from her simmering body.
Her gaze came back to me. She voiced a priority with potty words.
“I’m not a crack-head yoga whore who frequents galas with other crack-head yoga whores.”
I listened but wasn’t shocked. Too much had happened during my life to be surprised by anything.
“Is that your secret?”
“I never fake orgasms. I’ve never had an orgasm.”
One knee was bent the other remained straight. Long arms hugged her torso. Her eyes fluttered.
That was her poker bluff.
If her exposé was truthful, friendship was sound, but we wouldn’t become lovers. I liked reality not fiction. I encouraged truth not dishonesty. She was dishonest with me. An enemy of mine once said I’d had trusticles—having the balls to trust someone in a difficult situation.
“Have you engaged in sex?”
Her laugher was petite. “What are your secrets?”
“I hate riding motorcycles.”
She reached for my face and I backed away.
Her fingertips soothed the razorblade scar on my cheek. She rolled circles around the skin, feeling the linear soft tissue.
“You remind me of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man,” Isabella said.
“Excuse me, but his proportion of man is defined by a circle and square.”
She rolled her eyes. “You idiot, he’s the blend of art and science.”
I looked down at the tachometer on the Kawasaki then back at Isabella Borghini’s alluring face.
“You should go view the drawing in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. I can schedule an appointment for you to view the Vitruvian Man.”
“Perhaps someday, but I’ll pass for now,” I said.
I took her hand to my nose and smelled the fragrance of Grand Marnier. An essence of wild tropical oranges floated about. She must have spilled her drink on her hand. I smelled the liqueur and wanted to eat French fries. She liked cognac after all, and she was stunned when I suggested sipping it while eating fries.
Isabella pulled her hand from under my nose. Seduction was long delicate fingers. She reached for my hair and I backed away again.
Like lovers in a movie, the narrow space between our eyes emitted fire.
“People touch me with my permission.”
Her fingers streamed through my hair from my forehead backward all the way to my neck. Like stroking a cat her touch was delicate. She then choked a fistful of hair in her palm and yanked my head sideways. Her strength was determined. I squeezed her thin wrist, she squealed like a mouse. She released her grip and I pushed her away.
“Who killed the man back stage,” I said.
Tears flew from her eyes like she witnessed her parents being murdered and she was helpless.
“You bastard she whispered.” Her fists slammed my chest. “You killed him.”
I took her wrists in my hands. Her eyes sweltered.
“You know I didn’t kill him. Did your boyfriend kill him?
“They think you killed him.”
“Who was he?”
She mouthed the words, “I don’t know.”
Isabella Borghini gripped both hands around my head. Confusion took control. She deep kissed me. Alcohol singed across my lips. Her mouth tasted of pretense, and her action was instigated from disorder.
I untwisted her hands from my head and pushed her away. She stumbled then straightened her posture.
“Would you fuck me senseless if I asked you?” The words taunted me.
She was a yoga whore after all. But that didn’t mean she was tainted.
“Who was the dead man, Isabella?”
“You’re the thief and murderer, you tell me?”
“Are the other two men alive?”
“I don’t know. Someone said you killed the man and stole the necklace.”
“Bullshit. Do you think I killed the man and stole the necklace?”
“Come on, take me out of here,” Isabella cried. “You have to give the necklace back.”
I had never stuck a knife in my back but one was now dangling from it. I asked if she knew who the dead man was. The wrong piano key in my symphony of getting acquainted with Isabella was over. And now I didn’t want to know her. I didn’t want to kiss her, make love to her or fuck her senseless. A man she knew was dead and she was some kind of drunken psychopath on a mission.
We exchanged one more expression.
Horror.
Isabella Borghini?
I wasn’t afraid of her for what she could do but for what she was capable of doing while doing it.
“The necklace is unimportant compared to the dead man,” I said.
“The necklace is my family heirloom.”
Her statement had my head cock sideways in disbelief.
“Your lover killed the man and was about to steal the necklace,” I said. “You didn’t come after me because you didn’t want the law involved?”
“The necklace is mine,” the red lips slurred at me.
“And I should believe that? You’re twenty and you own a multimillion dollar necklace?”
“I’m twenty four. The necklace belongs to me.”
A bolt of black lightening caught my attention over her shoulder. Isabella’s partner came trotting at us. He ran and accidentally kicked the glass Isabella sat on the sidewalk. The thick bottom of the glass skyrocketed forward and bounced off my bike’s back tire.
“Nice to have made your acquaintance,” I said.
I popped the clutch on the motorcycle, darted forward, and braked in the middle of the street by the piece of glass.
Isabella Borghini’s escort stood facing her. His distressed expression meant nothing to me. Could he have been the killer and she was so intoxicated she didn’t realize it?
The big man took Isabella by the shoulders and guided her into the partying crowd. He tried to avert her from looking over her shoulder at me. She escaped from his grip, ran at me and stopped on the curbside. Two middle fingers flew up over her head. She mouthed the words fuck you.
They were enduring words, a declaration that I adored. She could have said go to hell, eat shit, up yours, drop dead or piss off. But she didn’t. That meant she wanted to get to know me.
I celebrated the Cannes Festival air of warmth splashing over my body, driving down the boulevard toward Monte Carlo in pursuit of cognac and fries.
Chapter 3
SEVEN DAYS had passed since I was at the Cannes Film Festival. I had enjoyed the festivities there even though I didn’t attend one of them except for the independent film Finding Reality, where I’d taken the necklace. Over the past ten years I’d attended several film festivals: the UK Laugh Out Loud in Leicestershire, the Bucharest, Romania Anonimul International Independent Film Festival, and the Prague, Czech Republic Karvoly Vary International Film Festival. I had borrowed something of value from each.
Last week in Cannes I had dined in a few fine restaurants, made flight arrangements, obtained a visa and made my jewel sell contact in Uganda. Of course I gambled, ate steak and drank champagne at the Monte-Carlo Grand Casino, thinking I would bump into Isabella Borghini by accident. But I didn’t. She was a thingy of the past and I had to move forward.
The piercing sun was something I couldn’t count on in Kampala, Uganda, during the month of May. This time of year was the rainiest month, and today the downpour was an endless stream like Lake Victoria Falls.
My virginity was altered during a weather hallmark in my third year in college. I met a woman in a torrent rainstorm on the corner of Oxford and New Bond streets downtown London.
Under an awning I stood dry, my nineteen year old body anxious to get moving, watching water puddles form on the sidewalk when the woman walked by me. Her long stride turned into short slow-motion steps when she caught my stare at her legs dangling under a short blue skirt. She stopped and the rain plummeted over her umbrella. I knew she would take me home for a sporting event that night.
I was now in Kampala twenty-two years later.
For eating I avoided the big resort hotels downtown with spa facilities, pools and tennis courts. They were for tourists, seminars and conferences, the attendees less concerned with what they ate than who they bedded. I was here for hard-core business and genuine Ugandan food, not for a Beddy Cocker.
Kampala, Uganda
I put my leather jacket on the back of the chair and my small guy stuff satchel on the floor beside it. My navy blue t-shirt and khakis were damp. I didn’t wear a button down long sleeve shirt because my muscles were uncomfortable with the seams.
I sat down. The small round table rested on a tiny veranda on the sidewalk at Restaurant Ganda on Mbale Street. Six other tables had twelve chairs and all were vacant and sheltered under a large awning. Ganda was a clean, small eatery. I discovered it last year while touring the city. Several mornings of the six days I toured around town I ate here, and discovered the unique flavors of Ugandan chow.
The hot cup of orange rooibos tea tinged my tongue. I was trying to be a vegan anarchist and nibbled on Matoke with vegetable sauce the waiter had delivered.
My contact for the sale of the necklace was late. The rain was a good distraction. I ate and tried not to worry.
I didn’t see any historic significance about Uganda before January 1967. That was the month and year of my birth. However, a few things from my high school history class about Uganda surged through my mind.
Idi Amin Dada in January 1971 ousted Obote’s regime, amended the Uganda constitution and gave himself absolute power. During the next eight years of cultural degradation, Ugandan social disintegration, political persecution and ethnic cleansing had Idi Amin salivating over bread and blood until 1979. That year he fled Uganda, ran away as cowards do. Ugandan exiles and the Tanzanian army liberated the starving overpopulated, destitute country.
Today, Uganda had a huge amount of orphaned children due to aids, other diseases, famine, neglect and abandonment. The children of the world were always the victims of adult neglect. Children inherit everything. I came here to help a few kids who were parentless by giving them beds in my orphanage.
Mbale Street was a river making rubber tires hydroplane and cars slam into each other. Just seconds ago a small accident involving six cars happened at the intersection where a stoplight wasn’t placed. A cabby pulled a rolling California stop. I ignored the pileup and plowed into my fragrant food on my plate.
The Matoke meatless dish was delicious. I’d eaten steamed green bananas before when I came here to pick up three smart homeless children destined for my orphanage in Cape Town, South Africa.
I stuffed one last piece of banana in my mouth and watched the waiter tiptoe over and refill my cup with steaming hot tea. He had two millet muffins on a saucer for my desert and sat them on the table. He picked up the empty Matoke dish.
“What’s your name?” I asked
“Salongo,” he said in an English-Swahili accent.
“Father of twins?”
“Yes.” His toothy smile acknowledged his surprise that I could translate Swahili. “I have two pairs of twins. Two boys six years old and two girls three years old.”
I smiled back and examined his face. He wasn’t one of the waiters here last year.
Salongo’s wide-set chocolate eyes, murky skin and forty something frailness inside of baggy green clothes, announced that he needed help feeding his family first, and feeding himself second. My tab was five Euros. I reached into my satchel, extracted a wad of bills and gave Salongo 36, 860 Ugandan Shillings. That was equivalent to fifteen Euros.
He didn’t take the money.
I stuffed the bills in his pants pocket.
“That’s for your beautiful two sets of twins. Shouldn’t your name be Salongo Salongo, for having two sets of twins?”
His rocket launch laughter meant he understood.
“I guess you didn’t use in-vitro fertilization like Hollywood celebrities?”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Just joking,” I said.
“What is your name?”
“Alexander Crown.”
“I will take the money for my children, Mr. Alexander. However, if you ever need my help with something, you know where to find me.”
He left my table and I was alone like a fish out of water, a person longing for intelligent conversation and friendship. Months had passed since I’d experienced the tenderness of a woman, or a confrontational conversation with anybody.
The rain crashed down like crystals and looked like dangling, shimmering strings. The sky’s decoration camouflaged the view of the high rise hotel across the street.
A scantily clad young Ugandan socialite walked by Restaurant Ganda under a burdened black umbrella. She stopped and looked my way. Anxiety spread across her face as to whether she would approach me or continue walking. Swift hand movements showed my disinterest. I didn’t need a freaky deaky. I wanted to sell the expensive necklace.
My eyes darted away from the hooker and watched the back of Salongo stroll toward the kitchen. When I turned back to the woman on the sidewalk she was gone.
Since my contact was overdue by fifteen minutes I wondered if he’d show at all. The multimillion dollar necklace I had stolen was my offer for today.
Tomorrow was going to be my day of pleasure in Uganda when I would visit an orphanage and hand out gifts of clothing and food. Today wasn’t a day for bargaining. Dumping the bling and moving forward was my goal.
If I could get one million for the necklace I’d be happy to spend half of it on supplies for my orphanage, and the other half on organizing thefts and traveling expenses.
A one million dollar sale for the necklace was excessive. A half million wouldn’t even be offered. That didn’t concern me. What concerned me would be a flippant situation. The diamond and emerald necklace was useless to me and overpriced for anybody interested in acquiring it. I wouldn’t let myself get killed over diamonds and emeralds beat up maybe but not killed.
Another concern of mine was whether I’d be hi-jacked by this buyer of jewelry—crushed, stabbed, shot and left to die on a muddy street in Kampala, for senseless scavengers to execute the seven deadly sins on my person.
That wouldn’t happen. Street criminals wouldn’t shove needles under my fingernails, snap my teeth with pliers, or hammer a nail in my ear. They didn’t have time. The contact would have to either shoot me in the head or wrestle me to the ground before I’d get to the Grand Imperial Hotel where I had a room. The hotel has a high-security environment where I could hire escorts for protection and escape to the airport.
The street backed up with traffic caused by the accident. The raucous rain muffled horns and yelps by drivers. I watched windshield wipers bump and grind and windows steam up inside the dozen gridlocked cars. Sheets of rain slammed on top of everything outside. The traffic conditions seemed bleak and hopeless—something like most of Ugandan citizens living in a depressed economy and miserable city.
Across the congested street, underneath a hotel awning stood a tall brunette woman beside a hotel doorman. I sipped my tea, nibbled on a muffin and observed the movements of the thin debutant.
She resembled Isabella Borghini, without the glamour and suggestive attire. Few white women trek around Kampala alone, none that I’ve known, and I believed Isabella would be the one woman that would travel alone.
The tall collar of the black leather overcoat was raised. The umbrella was cocked forward so I could see her chin and lips.
A black Range Rover pulled up and the doorman escorted her to the door. She looked at me long enough that I believed she was Isabella, the man seducer.
The world was a small planet and two people by chance could bump into each other. I believed that Isabella was here because of the necklace. I believed she wanted to kill me to get it back.
I stood up from my chair to get a better look and she stepped into the black Range Rover. The driver pulled into traffic. Her face looked at me through the darkened window. That wouldn’t be the last time I’d see her.
The Rover moved out of sight up the street.
A dark man moved underneath the awning of Restaurant Ganda. He looked like he stepped out of a Humphrey Bogart celluloid movie. His wet black suit clung to his oversized body like spandex. He was soaked head to toe. His small umbrella didn’t do its job or he was too stupid to know how to use it.
His face opened up when he saw me standing, the one customer at Restaurant Ganda. He was my contact and I waved him over.
He was a half millimeter shorter than me, and weighed over 115 kilograms. He hadn’t missed one meal in years.
He folded his umbrella and dropped it on the floor. Being soaked didn’t seem to bother him. He pulled a chair from a near-by table and plumped his weight down.
He looked like an urban spazmofucker—a total knob end idiot. I’d have to set up discussion rules to maintain control, and stay two steps in front of him.
“You look dashing,” I quipped.
He growled. “I would kill you now if I was instructed.”
His French accent was an excrement decoy. Stiff body movement indicated grave business. Deciding to play his game gifted me with quick humor. A stupid man would heist a diamond necklace and peddle it on the streets of Kampala. I wasn’t that stupid man.
“I would run away from you before you had a chance to kill me.”
His mouth spewed deadly laughter. Rainwater dripped down his face and he wiped the wet away. The annoying black French douche bag opened his mouth and his immense tongue wagged in my face.
“Running away will get you killed sooner.”
This man was an imposter, an interceptor of the buyer of the necklace. I was now faced with being killed by an idiotic French Secret Service assassin.
He leaned on his elbows, stretching his fat body forward. His moon face was awkwardly close to mine. The yellow of his eyes should have been white. Narrow nostrils should have been wide. Large ears should have been small. Nappy hair should have been shaved. Thin lips should have been full. He was a phony, an interracial Frenchman, white and black heritage, working for an agency filled with corruption.
I leaned back in my chair. The man’s cigar breath wasn’t any form of desert after eating Matoke. Words came from my lips but I wasn’t chatting.
“My ex-partner once told me what good is an eagle without wings.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” he growled.
He sat back in his chair and left his hands on the table. He was here to kill me in one movement like a piano crescendo.
“I just thought I’d break the ice between us.”
“The stupid American is frightened of me?”
I smiled, he frowned. I smiled wider, he sneered.
“You aren’t the crème de la crème that I’d thought I’d be negotiating with, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
He moved his hand forward across the table.
“Hand over the necklace, fucking creep. If I don’t kill you the next negotiator will.”
My brain was ablaze with revulsion.
“You know what? You’re the type of cerebral cripple stupid people evolve from.”
He took a deep breath.
“Fuck you creepy American.”
I held my breath.
“I’ll explain further. You’re a putrescent midget.”
His cigar breath blew across the table.
“Here’s my card.” He pulled a small handgun from his jacket pocket.
I hopped out of the chair, upended the table against his belly and shoved the big guy over.
The back end of his head slammed on the cement like a sledge hammer. I heard bone shatter and watched his body bounce and twitch.
Salongo came running out of the restaurant and stopped short of the fat body. He shook from fright and stuttered questions.
“Is he dead? What should I do?
We looked at the body. The round table rolled off his stomach on the cement, making a clattering noise. Salongo and I looked at each other like an accident from hell just happened.
The body gurgled. He smelled before and smelled worse now.
“He’s dead, Salongo,” I said.
I grabbed my satchel off the floor, dug out some money and handed the bills to Salongo. He took the cash this time, his expression dazed with curiosity and trust.
“Here’s a hundred thousand shillings. Put the table and chairs up. Call the police and tell them he collapsed and died. That’s what happened.”
“Yes sir, Mr. Alexander,” Salongo said. “A fat man like that can have a heart attack anytime.”
“A fat miscreant like him can die anytime by a heart attack or otherwise. By the way, my name is Mr. Crown not Mr. Alexander.”
“I know that.”
We both smiled and knew we’d established a friendship.
“In ancient African culture,” Salongo said, “elders whispered that two people create a dream—one who had the dream and another who helps fulfill the dream.”
“Are you the dreamer?” I asked.
“Yes I am,” he said. The biggest fucking smile I’d ever seen split his face.
I picked up the dead man’s gun and stuffed the barrel inside his belt. Looking at his face reminded me of dead bodies I’d seen strewn along the sides of the roads in Darfur, Sudan, sights I’d been embarrassed to admit I’d seen.
I put my damp jacket on and threw my satchel over my left shoulder.
“Shall I call you a cab, Mr. Alexander?”
“No thanks. What good is an eagle without wings?”
I got soaked crossing the street between cars with angry entombed drivers.
At the entrance of Hotel Africana Exquisite I shook off my clothes and examined my boots for water damage.
The doorman stood beside me.
“Do you know who the tall sexy woman was you helped get in the Range Rover?”
He pointed at the hotel door and yelled at me over the plummeting rain. “She’s a quest for two days.”
Chapter 4
THE HOTEL Africana was fastidious, much like a parrot trying to speak Swahili or Yoruba languages.
The location was all inclusive, a mainstream area that was a three minute drive from the city center. Since Restaurant Ganda was across the street, I would have to change my accommodations to stay in the hotel next time. I’d made a new friend of Salongo, father of twins, and we could perhaps be beneficial to each other in the future.
I stepped inside the Africana Exquisite all wet and fussy and found a busy place of commerce. John Barry’s song Have You Got a Story for Me from the movie Out Of Africa filtered the sound system. The spongy piano piece was gentle.
I wiped at my clothes and dangled my satchel—drops of rain fell to the entrance area rug. I didn’t like physical fighting, and that confrontation wasn’t a real fight, but the high from the man’s demise was an endorphin uptake.
I looked around. Three white clerks dressed in black suits worked behind the counter checking in a dozen guests. The concierge sat at a reception desk ten feet to the side of the counter. Her light coffee complexion and chopped spiked hair seduced me. The small blue dress she wore pressed excessive skin outward. Her hands shuffled papers while she talked into the phone headset. The forty plus years and pretty face resembled an aging actress who no longer fit the criteria of youngness for movie producers.
In the center of the lobby was a half-meter deep round multicolored tiled fountain. In the center of it sat a three-meter high beige marble sculpture of a giraffe, spurting water from its mouth that trickled down its neck back into the fountain. The sculpture didn’t thrill me, looking like it was spitting on itself, but I wasn’t appalled by it either. Management should have hired a local artist to color texture the giraffe.
The concierge’s desk was a few feet away from me.
“How are you today?”
She looked up and smiled. Her English-Swahili voice was smooth chocolate pudding.
“I’m happy and friendly. What may I do for you?”
I squatted down so our faces met where she sat.
“What’s your name?”
“Shehumme. What’s yours?”
“Alexander.”
“Mine is pronounced Sheum.”
“That’s beautiful. Mine is pronounced Alexander. May I leave my pack beside your desk for a few minutes?”
She nodded and examined my wet clothes.
“We accommodate all customers.”
I lowered my bag and sat it along the outside of her desk.
“May I ask you something else?” She nodded. “That thin white woman wearing a full length black leather coat that left fifteen minutes ago, do you know her name?”
Shehumme raised her eyebrows.
“Did you ask the doorman?”
“He was too busy checking her backside,” I said.
She looked down at her desk. I caught her glimpse at me out the corners of her eyes.
“Are you interested in that skinny white woman or are you flirting with me?”
The question caught me off guard, knowing perchance she came on to me.
“Yes and yes.”
She smiled. We both nodded and shook hands. Her palm was wet and warm, wet from me wiping my hand on my wet pants.
“I can tell you her name but that will cost you.” She pulled a Kleenex from the box on top of her desk and wiped her hand.
“How much?”
“Not money, just a glass of red wine and a subdued romp.”
My eyebrows lifted skyward.
“I could do that. We’d have to exchange lab reports before exchanging body fluids.”
Her eyebrows remained level, knowing the jokes were African humor. Her pudding voice massaged my ears again.
“Isabella Borghini is her name. May I tell her you called?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t. May I call you some other time?”
“You may call me if you want to take my offer. Here’s my card. I’ll be waiting.”
I stood up.
“By the way, your choice of lobby music is terrific.”
“I’d rather listen to the sound track from Hotel Rwanda instead of Out of Africa. That music is African rather than white.”
I went to the center of the large lobby where the elaborate water fountain was running at full capacity. The life size giraffe’s spitting reminded me of my teen years.
A large coal-black hand slapped my right shoulder while I looked up at the tall sculpture. The man was Sherwin Mubutu, my co-owner of our Masai Orphanage in Cape Town, South Africa. We had met five years earlier when I first started donating food and clothing to the deserted children the orphanage housed. Since then I’d purchased the orphanage, gave Sherwin co-ownership and adopted six young girls who still lived there with the other children we’d adopted over the years.
Sherwin Mubutu stood a head taller and his voice was an octave lower than mine. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. His skin tone blended with the threads.
“Alexander.”
We hugged, shook hands and smirked like little kids.
“Is our meeting still on next week?”
“I didn’t cancel it. I can’t wait to show you the skills our kids now possess from the twelve laptop computers you brought two months ago.”
“Excellent. Skills are what they need.”
“This skill you have to skip from continent to continent is a giant step for us. But you always seem to be in danger.”
“Tell me again why we keep our orphanage in South Africa instead of in the Masai country of Kenya.”
Sherwin looked up at the giraffe’s head. He listened to the water streaming out of its mouth.