The Mordida Man

2

There were four of them in the dank cellar of the old boarded-up house in the short street in Hammersmith. Two men and two women. The houses on either side were also boarded up and vacant, waiting for the wrecker who was now three weeks past due. The cellar smelled of dead cat.

One of the women had been stripped almost naked and bound with yellow insulation wire to a heavy dining-room chair. Her name was Maria Luisa de la Cova, and she was a thirty-four-year-old Venezuelan. She was also the coughing woman who had sold the man called Felix to the American for twenty thousand dollars in twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

The money was now stacked neatly on a water-ringed oak dining-room table that matched the chair. The table had only three legs. A substitute fourth leg had been fashioned out of two Cutty Sark whisky crates. Next to the stacked money was the large black leather purse with the silver clasp. The purse had been turned inside out and its lining ripped away. There was no electricity. Light came from six pink candles stuck into beer bottles.

One of the men, a pallid, almost lashless blond with a slab body and a flat solemn face, lit a cigarette with a disposable lighter. He was called Frank by the others, although his real name was Bernt Diringshoffen and he had been born thirty-two years ago in Hamburg. After lighting the cigarette, he puffed on it inexpertly, not inhaling, obviously a non-smoker.

The de la Cova woman watched him. Her eyes were pink and her face was tear-streaked, but she was no longer crying. There were angry red burns on the left side of her neck and on her small breasts. Four burns in all.

“Tell us,” Diringshoffen said and blew on the coal of the cigarette.

“I’ve already told you,” the de la Cova woman said and began to cough harshly. Diringshoffen waited patiently until the coughing at last had ended. “Tell us again,” he said pleasantly.

She began speaking in a rapid monotone so low and indistinct that the others had to bend forward to hear.

“He said his name was Arnold. I don’t know if that was his real name or not. I don’t even know if it was his surname or his given name. I don’t care. I just called him Arnold, if I ever called him anything. We met several times, maybe four, maybe five. Twice in Soho, at least twice there, and again in Islington in a cafe he knew. Maybe three times there. In Islington. Maybe just two. I can’t remember.”

“Did he say he was CIA?” the other woman asked. The other woman also spoke English, but with an almost crippling French accent. Her name was Françhise Leget, and she had been born twenty-nine years ago in Algiers. She had large black eyes that she blinked rapidly and a thin stylish body, and many thought her to be quite pretty.

The de la Cova woman seemed to find Françoise Leget’s question stupid. She sighed wearily and said, “I’ve already explained that.”

The second of the two men was older than the rest, nearly thirty-eight. He was also Japanese. The others called him Nelson, although his real name was Ko Yoshikawa. His English had a hard American edge to it.

“Please explain it again,” he said. “We would appreciate it very much.”

The de la Cova woman sighed. “He didn’t say anything like that — that he was CIA. He didn’t have to. He just sat down at my table that day in Soho and said he knew all about me — that I was thirty-two and sick and needed money for the baby and that Felix was going to dump me anyhow.” She looked at the Japanese. “That part was true, wasn’t it — about Felix?”

Ko frowned and said, “What did you tell him about us?”

“Nothing. He wasn’t interested in any of you. He seemed to know all about you — about all of us. But the only one he wanted was Felix.”

“And you gave him Felix,” Françoise Leget said.

“I gave him Felix. The baby was sick. I was sick. I’m still sick.” As if to prove it, she started coughing again.

After the coughing finally stopped, Diringshoffen said, “When did it happen — exactly?”

“At noon,” she said. “At exactly noon today. I called Felix this morning and told him I’d heard something bad — you know, something I couldn’t say over the phone. We arranged to meet at the Lord Elgin pub in Maida Vale at noon. I was in a taxi with the American — with Arnold. I don’t think it was a real taxi. When Felix came out of the tube station, I pointed him out. The American wanted to know if I was sure. I said yes, I was sure. He had already given me the money. He made me get out of the taxi. I don’t know what happened to Felix.”

She looked up at the Japanese and in a soft plaintive voice said, “Won’t you please kill me now?”

At first, Ko didn’t reply. It was almost as if he hadn’t heard her request because his thoughts were in some distant, more interesting place. But after a moment he nodded in an abstracted way at the German, who dropped the cigarette, ground it out, picked up a length of yellow insulation wire, and stepped behind the bound woman.

The Japanese looked at Maria Luisa de la Cova then. “Well, yes, of course,” he said almost apologetically. “We’ll attend to that right away.”

It was Ko himself who made the call to the Embassy of the Libyan Arab Republic. He made it from a pay phone in the lobby of the Cunard Hotel. The call was taken by Faraj Abedsaid, who was listed on the Embassy roster as Attaché (Cultural Section), a position that left him with considerable free time.

After identifying himself as Mr. Leafgreen, Ko said, “Call me at this number,” and read off the number of the pay phone, carefully transposing its last two digits as a routine precautionary measure.

Twelve minutes later the phone in the Cunard lobby rang. After Ko answered with a toneless “Yes,” Abedsaid said, “Well?” and Ko said, “The Americans have Felix.”

There was a brief silence until Abedsaid whispered, “Well, shit.” Abedsaid was thirty-eight and one of the first Libyans to earn a degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Oklahoma. Or for that matter, from any university.

Ko spoke quickly, outlining what he felt were the facts. When he was done, there was another silence until Abedsaid sighed and said, “The Colonel’s gonna be madder’n a shot bobcat with a toothache.” During his four-year stay in Oklahoma, Abedsaid had carefully acquired a large collection of aphorisms, metaphors, and similes peculiarly indigenous to the American southwest. He delighted in peppering his conversation with them, especially in London, where it seemed to offend almost everyone.

“How soon can you get word to him?” Ko asked.

“Within the hour.”

“We’ve decided it would be best if we went back to Rome.”

“All of you?”

“Yes, all three of us.”

“Do you need anything — money?”

“No, there’s sufficient money,” Ko said, thinking of the twenty thousand dollars in twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

“I can let them know in Rome that you’re coming.”

“Yes, that would help.”

“The Colonel is... well, he’s not going to like this at all.”

“No,” Ko said. “I don’t suppose he will.”

“He and Felix were close. Extremely close.”

“I know. Have you any idea of what he might do?”

“The Colonel?” Abedsaid paused as though to consider the question. “Something weird, probably,” he said and hung up.

The Boeing 727 was painted a light cream color and bore no markings other than the minimum required by international air regulations. It was five miles high and 213 miles west of Ireland when the fifty-nine-year-old doctor shuffled into the customized lounge section and slumped down into an armchair across from the man who sometimes called himself Arnold.

“Well, sir, he’s gone,” the doctor said with a heavy sigh that wafted whisky fumes into the other man’s face.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Like I said, gone. Dead. He died. You want the technical explanation or you want it in laymanese?”

Arnold sprang up out of his chair and bent down low over the doctor, who shrank back from the large hands that fluttered around erratically as though in search of something to grab — or choke. Arnold’s eyes bulged and his curiously rubbery face flushed a dark, dangerous red as his mouth began to stretch itself into odd shapes. The nut’s going to scream, the doctor thought.

“He’s not dead,” Arnold said after his mouth finally had twisted itself into a set smile, which the doctor regarded as more than a trifle mad.

The doctor shook his head wisely. “How much of that junk did you guys pump into him?”

Arnold wiped hard at the bottom half of his face, as though to erase all evidence of shock and surprise. “How much? Just what you told us, Dr. Lush. That’s how much. One hundred milligrams.”

The doctor frowned, struggling to appear thoughtful, even judicious. “Well, he should’ve been able to handle that much — providing you guys didn’t make some damn fool mistake — or he had some kind of respiratory problem. Or heart condition. Or something.” He brightened. “Anyway, the autopsy will tell.”

“No,” Arnold said, smiling again, although not quite so madly.

“No what?”

“He’s not dead.”

“Oh, yeah, he’s dead all right,” the doctor said comfortably, confident of his diagnosis. “He’s dead because of all that dope you pumped into him. It probably made him so nice and relaxed he just forgot to breathe. But like I said, the autopsy will tell.”

“No,” Arnold said.

“No what this time?”

“No autopsy.”

The doctor frowned, as if trying to remember some half-forgotten instructions. At last he seemed to recall them. “Well, if there’s not gonna be any autopsy, then I gotta do the other thing.”

“How long will that take?”

The doctor frowned again. “A couple of minutes. Maybe three.”

“Do it then,” Arnold said.

When the doctor was finished, it took only four minutes for the 727 to drop to six thousand feet. Its rear door, a device at one time much favored by parachuting skyjackers, was lowered. A moment later the body of the man called Felix fell a little more than a mile into the sea.