The Mordida Man

13

The apartment building was fairly new — new for South Kensington anyway — and the Saudi who owned it was from Jidda on the Red Sea. Although the rents were well up in the stratosphere, it didn’t seem to bother any of the tenants, nearly all of them from the Middle East, and there was a long waiting list, possibly because the place was completely staffed by Arabic-speaking personnel who were, to a man, impecunious if distant members of the Saudi landlord’s enormous family.

Holding down the reception desk when Chubb Dunjee and Harold Hopkins, the thief, walked in at 2 P.M. wearing their gray coveralls with “Belgravia Locks Ltd.” stitched in red across their backs, was Saleh Khoja, the landlord’s twenty-seven-year-old third cousin on Khoja’s father’s second wife’s side.

Hopkins, followed by Dunjee, moved over to the desk, set his tool kit down, fumbled in his breast pocket for a folded sheet of paper, and spread it out on the countertop. He looked at Khoja suspiciously.

“You in charge, mate?” Hopkins said in the extra loud voice he always unconsciously used when addressing those who came from across the sea.

Khoja leaned on the counter and looked off into space. “I am in charge,” he said.

“I got an order here to install two new deadbolts on 531,” Hopkins said, reading from the form, which was headed “Work Order, Belgravia Locks Ltd.” Hopkins squinted at the name written on the form. “Mr. Faraj Abedsaid, if that’s how you pronounce it.”

“I know nothing about it,” Khoja said and yawned.

“You know nothing about it, huh?”

“Nothing.”

Hopkins nodded as if that was exactly what he had expected and turned to Dunjee. “You hear that, Ralph? He don’t know nothing about it. He just works here. He’s just the chief counter holder-downer.”

Dunjee shrugged.

“Let’s go,” Hopkins said and picked up his tool case.

“You cannot go up,” Khoja said, examining the fingernails on his left hand. “It is not permitted.”

Incredulity spread over Hopkins’ face. “Up! You hear that, Ralph? Abdullah here thinks we’re going up. We’re not going up. We’re going back to the shop and ring up Mr. Abedsaid at the Embassy and tell him it’s a no go at Cameldrivers’ Towers and he can bloody well wait another two months to have his locks changed, and if somebody keeps on breaking in and stealing things, then maybe he better talk to the man in charge, which is you, idn’t it?”

Khoja frowned. “Stealing?”

“Got the stereo the other night, they did. Right, Ralph?”

Dunjee nodded.

“I had not heard,” Khoja said.

“Well, he’s not going to be spreading it around now, is he? Not likely.” Hopkins gave the counter a pat of finality. “But you can explain it all to him. Just tell him we wouldn’t go up without your okay. Tell him to give us a ring. We can be back in a month or two.” Hopkins turned away.

“Wait,” Khoja said.

Hopkins turned back.

“I can ring him.”

“Ring him?”

“Yes. The telephone. Here.”

“Well, that’s an idea now, isn’t it? You got his private number?”

“Private number?”

“At the Libyan Embassy. Here.” Hopkins dug out the work order and again spread it in front of Khoja, pointing to a telephone number.

“Ah, yes. His private number.”

Hopkins and Dunjee watched Khoja dial the number. It was answered on the second double ring. Khoja started out hesitantly in English and then with obvious relief switched quickly into voluble Arabic. The conversation went on for several minutes.

After Khoja hung up he turned back to Hopkins. “You can go up.”

“You talked to him, did you?”

“To his assistant.”

“Miss Salem?”

“You know her?”

“She’s the one who called in the order.”

“She gave me instructions,” Khoja said. “You are to clean up afterwards. You are to leave no mess. She was very firm.”

“We never leave any mess, Jack,” Hopkins said and turned toward the elevator.

It was a two-room apartment, or possibly three, counting the small kitchen, which contained some cheap china and stainless steel flatware, a few glasses, and by way of nourishment two containers of frozen orange juice and a jar of instant coffee.

Dunjee watched Hopkins work. Hopkins was both methodical and fast. The kitchen took him only two minutes, and his search included a careful inspection of the oven as well as a fast but thorough look into the small space behind the refrigerator.

Hopkins moved into the living room shaking his head. “Nothing — except it’d be ducky if I knew what the hell I was looking for.”

“I don’t know,” Dunjee said.

A small kneehole desk was positioned in front of the windows. Hopkins crossed over and tried the drawers. They were locked. He took a small length of thin steel from his pocket and with a quick move that was almost too fast to follow snapped the desk lock open. He looked up at Dunjee. “You take the desk,” he said.

Hopkins began his search of the living room while Dunjee sat behind the desk and started opening drawers. In the bottom drawer was a thick unsealed envelope. In it was a sheaf of five-and ten-pound notes. Dunjee tossed them onto the desktop. “Here,” he said.

Hopkins rolled back a small, cheap Oriental rug he’d been looking under, moved to the desk, picked up the envelope, and looked inside. “Nice,” he said and stuck the envelope down into his coverall pocket.

The rest of the desk’s contents included a Lloyds Bank checkbook, blank envelopes, stationery, stamps, some dried-out ballpoint pens, and a small key which Dunjee tossed onto the desktop. “What’s this for?” he said.

Hopkins came over to look at it. “A tin box. Or maybe a briefcase. I’ll try the bedroom.”

While Hopkins was gone, Dunjee reopened each of the desk’s seven drawers and ran his hand under their bottoms. He then took each drawer all the way out to see whether anything had been taped to their ends. He was putting the last drawer back when Hopkins came in from the bedroom carrying a small gray steel box.

“In the wardrobe,” he said. “Back behind the luggage.”

Hopkins used the key to open the steel box. When he saw what its contents were, he wrinkled his nose and spun the box around so Dunjee could look. The box’s contents consisted mostly of pictures, eight-by-ten glossies. The pictures were of nude young girls, most of them in their early teens. All were engaged in various homosexual practices. All looked very English. Dunjee sighed and started examining each picture, both back and front. There were forty-two pictures. On the back of the thirty-ninth picture was the name Frank and a phone number written in pencil. With another sigh, Dunjee copied it down into his address book.

The rest of the steel box’s contents consisted of papers for a 450 SLC Mercedes; a .25-caliber Colt automatic, loaded; a switchblade knife with a six-inch blade and a broken spring; a cheap souvenir metal model of the Eiffel tower; a small suede drawstring bag that felt heavy, and a breast-pocket-size notebook whose leather cover was embossed in gold with “Organize Your Day.”

Dunjee thumbed through the notebook. What few entries there were were written in Arabic. He put the notebook into a coverall pocket, picked up the drawstring bag, opened it, and dumped its contents on the desk. Twenty gold Krugerrands spilled out. Dunjee had just finished stacking them into two neat piles when Hopkins came out of the bedroom again shaking his head. At the sight of the gold he stopped shaking his head and smiled.

“Makes you want to go to church, doesn’t it?” Hopkins said as Dunjee shoved the two stacks of gold coins toward him.

“What about this?” Dunjee said, indicating the .25-caliber pistol.

“You mean if I were on me own?”

Dunjee nodded.

“I’d take it. Might fetch a few quid.”

Dunjee shoved the pistol into a hip pocket, repacked the contents of the steel box carelessly, and handed it to Hopkins, who took it back into the bedroom. He came out just as the polite knocking at the door began.

They looked at each other. “I’m not looking to go back inside, friend,” Hopkins said and held out his hand. Dunjee took the pistol from his hip pocket and handed it to him.

Hopkins moved to the door, the pistol in his right hand and behind his back. He used his left hand to open the door.

“Well?” Hopkins said.

Dunjee thought that the voice in the hall seemed to be all adenoids. “He told me to bring it up.”

“Who told you?” Hopkins said.

“The wog at the desk.”

“Bring what up?”

“The tickets. You Mr. — wait a sec — Abedsaid? You don’t look like no Mr. Abedsaid.”

“What kind of tickets?” Hopkins said.

“Airline tickets. These.”

“I’ll give ’em to him,” Hopkins said.

“You gotta sign.”

“Me guvnor does all the signing,” Hopkins said and opened the door wide enough to let in a skinny fifteen-year-old with a face full of angry pimples and know-it-all brown eyes. The eyes swept the room and settled on Dunjee. “You the signer?”

Dunjee nodded.

The messenger handed him a thick blue envelope, produced a receipt book, found the right page, and offered it to Dunjee along with a ball-point pen. Dunjee read the receipt carefully and then signed “Arsène Lupin” on the indicated line and handed it back. The youth read the name, moving his lips. He stared at Dunjee. “That French?”

Dunjee smiled.

The messenger turned to Hopkins. “What’s the matter, don’t he speak English?”

Hopkins jerked his head toward the door. “Out.”

“What about me generous gratuity?” the messenger said. “That’s how I take care of me old mum. We’d starve, we would, sir, mum and me, if it wasn’t for generous gratuities.”

Hopkins dug down into his pocket, found fifty pence, and slapped it into the youth’s outstretched palm. “Out.”

“Leggo my arm,” the youth said as Hopkins steered him through the door and slammed it shut. He moved back to the desk, took the pistol from his pocket, and offered it to Dunjee.

Dunjee again put the pistol away in a hip pocket, picked up the thick blue envelope, ripped it open, and examined the enclosed ticket.

“Where to?” Hopkins asked.

“Rome,” Dunjee said. “First class.”