Love You Dead

14 Thursday 19 February

It was barbecue night at the Shark Bite Sports Bar. Which meant that in a while the regulars would be drunk and stuffing their faces with charred chicken, cremated steaks and disintegrating fish and crustaceans.

Tooth, a short, wiry man with a shaven head and an angry face, sat out on the deck area overlooking the creek at the south end of Turtle Cove Marina, accompanied by his associate, Yossarian. He was constantly slapping his exposed legs and arms, which were under assault from mosquitoes. Smoke from the barbecue was getting in his eyes and really pissing him off.

The Caribbean evening air was 36 degrees and the humidity was high. Dressed in khaki shorts, a singlet printed with a picture of Jim Morrison, and flip-flops, he was perspiring. He was smoking a Lucky Strike cigarette and drinking a Maker’s Mark bourbon on the rocks. Yossarian sat beside him, twitching his nostrils at the smell of the meat, and occasionally lapping water from a bowl on the wooden decking.

The dog was an ugly mutt. It had different-coloured eyes, one bright red, the other grey, and looked like the progeny of a Dalmatian that had been shagged by a pug. It had started following Tooth along a street in Beverly Hills a few years back, when he was casing a house for a hit, and had ignored all his attempts to shoo it away. So he had ended up bringing it back to this island with him. He wasn’t sure who had adopted who. And he didn’t care.

It was getting to the end of Happy Hour right now, and the air-conditioned interior of the bar was full of ex-pat Brits, Americans and Canadians who mostly knew each other, and got drunk together in here every Thursday night — and most other nights, too. Tooth never talked to any of them. He didn’t like drunks. He was content to be with his loyal, sober associate.

There was a roar of laughter from inside the bar. It was wild some nights. A few years ago two Haitians who had tried to rob the bar had been shot dead by a customer. It was that kind of a place.

This island that he had called home for the past decade was a paradise for tourists, and one of the assholes of the Caribbean to the US border authorities. Around seventeen miles long and five wide, Providenciales — or Provo, as it was known to the locals — sat midway between Haiti, Jamaica and the southern tip of the Florida Keys.

The British made a pretence of policing it, and had put in a puppet governor, but mostly they left it to the US Coastguard, who had a base there, to deal with — or ride roughshod over — the corrupt and inept local police.

It was why Tooth chose to live here. No one asked questions and no one gave a damn. They left Tooth and his associate alone and he left them alone. He lived in a ground-floor apartment in a complex on the far side of the creek, and his cleaning lady, Mama Missick, looked after the dog when he was away on business.

The mosquitoes were particularly bad tonight. He didn’t do mosquitoes. Hated the critters. He’d long ago decided that if he ever met God — unlikely, as he didn’t believe in Him — the first question he would ask was why He had created mosquitoes.

To piss everyone off?

He was pissed off right now. His right ankle, where he had been bitten a short while ago, was itching like hell. Given the chance, he would nuke every mosquito on the planet. But right now he had another more important issue. Business. Or rather the lack of it.

Tooth had left school early and eventually ended up in the army, where he had served two tours in Iraq. It had changed his life forever, because it was there he discovered his real expertise as a killer — and in particular as a sniper. It had served him well.

He drank two more bourbons and smoked four more cigarettes, then headed home along the dark, deserted road with Yossarian, to grill some bonefish he had caught earlier on his boat, Long Shot.

He could do with another good contract. Two of his primary sources, both American, had gone — one doing life without parole, the other shot dead — he had executed the man himself. Now he had two new sources of business, but he hadn’t heard from either in several months. His stash, in his Swiss bank account, was running low. Fuelling his thirty-five-foot launch, with its thirsty twin Mercedes engines, which took him out hunting for his food most days, was expensive.

And one day he might need the boat to make a fast exit from this place. With a top speed of fifty-four knots, not much at sea could catch it. Besides, his days out on Long Shot were his life.

And he never knew how they were numbered. He just lived each year to see if he would get past his next birthday, which was not for several weeks. He had developed a kind of ritual on each birthday. He would leave the Shark Bite and drive to Kew Town, to visit his regular hooker. There were no drink-driving laws on the island. Afterwards he would drive home and play Russian Roulette.

The same.38 bullet had been in the chamber for the past ten years. He had dum-dummed it himself. Two deep cuts in the nose. These would cause the bullet to rip open on impact, punching a hole the size of a tennis ball in whatever it hit. He would have no possible chance of survival.

Tooth inserted the bullet back into the barrel, and spun the chamber. The gamble was where the bullet ended up. Would it be an empty chamber behind the firing pin or the loaded one?

Physics worked for plays of this game. The bullet weighed the chamber down. So it wasn’t a six-to-one chance. Most likely the bullet would end up at the bottom of the chamber. But one day, and that could be today, it would be different.

Bang.

Oblivion.

Although it wasn’t his birthday, he decided what the hell. Birthdays were just numbers. He pressed the barrel of the revolver to the side of his head. To the exact part of his temple he knew would have maximum destructive effect.

Then his phone rang.

He hesitated. Answer or ignore it? Could be business. And he couldn’t pull the trigger with his fucking phone ringing. He answered it.

And heard the harsh accent.

In recent years his paymasters had changed from American mobsters, who all sounded like they had chewing gum jammed up their nostrils, to these Eastern Europeans who were humourless but precise.

‘Call you back,’ he said, and instantly hung up.

He went over to a locked closet, selected a fresh pay-as-you-go phone from the ten that he had bought on his last trip to mainland USA, and returned the call to his contact. He listened to the instructions carefully, committing them to memory, reminded his client of his terms — one hundred per cent of the cash now to his Swiss bank account — then hung up. He didn’t do negotiation.

Then he picked up his gun again and pressed it to his temple.

Yossarian looked at his master and barked, balefully.

‘You want the bullet?’ Tooth asked. ‘That what you’re telling me? You don’t need to worry about me dying, you’ll be all right when I’ve gone. Got you taken care of. Mama Missick likes you. Dunno why, but she said she’d take care of you if anything happened to me. My lawyers have my will. I’ve left everything to you. You’ll be taken care of.’

Yossarian looked at him with his one grey and one red eye, staring him out.

‘Playing mind games with me?’

He put the gun back to his temple and, still staring at the dog, pulled the trigger.

Click.

As he lowered the gun, he could swear the goddam creature was grinning at him.

‘Think that’s funny, do you?’ He aimed the gun at the dog’s head and tightened his grip on the trigger. The dog continued to grin.

Then he raised the gun in the air and pulled the trigger all the way back.

There was a loud bang. Plaster from the ceiling showered down on him. Yossarian continued grinning. Like his master, the dog didn’t do fear.