Читать книгу Pretty Lethal - Joe Schreiber - Страница 15

‘Police and Thieves’ – The Clash

‘Who is that?’ I was standing in the corner by the door, trying to put my jeans back on, but they were too wet and I couldn’t even get one foot through the leg hole. I finally just gave up and tied the bathrobe tight around my waist, all too aware that I was naked underneath it. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘This way.’ Gobi was dragging the trunk away from the wall with one hand, holding the pistol in the other. ‘Come on.’

‘There’s a person in there!’

‘Was, yes. Is dead person now.’

‘No. No – I’m not – ’

Wham-wham-wham! Heavy, authoritative fists hammered louder on the door of the suite, seeming to make the air shake around us. I stumbled forward, my spine suddenly electrified inside me, shooting down from the base of my brain all the way to wherever humans’ vestigial tail had dropped off two million years ago. Right now I was ready to dive back into the primordial ooze and take my chances with the single-celled organisms – maybe they had the right idea, staying where they were.

Voices came from outside, angry, urgent – soldiers or cops, it sounded like, shouting in Italian.

‘Oh, shit, who’s that?’

‘Carabinieri, probably.’

‘Carbon who?’

‘I will explain to you later if we are still alive,’ she said. ‘Right now, you need to . . . How do you say it? Hold up your end?’

BANG! BANG! BANG! More angry voices, giving orders, making demands in voices that sounded more and more like Mussolini’s Blackshirts on a bender.

‘What am I supposed to do?’

She hoisted the steamer trunk by one of its straps, dragging it toward the balcony. ‘Lift. Now.’

‘What? Why?’

She gestured over the balcony, down to the canal.

‘Oh, no. No way. No.’

‘We must get rid of the body before . . .’ She nodded at the door where the knocking and the shouting had fallen abruptly, ominously silent.

‘Forget it!’

She pointed the pistol at me. ‘It was good to see you again, Perry.’

‘Wait, hold on. I’m not getting involved in this.’

‘Already you are involved.’

Click. Safety off. Argument over. I gripped the leather strap and hoisted up my end of the trunk. As I lifted, I felt something inside do a slumping barrel roll over to my end, which got suddenly heavier, and we heaved it up onto the balcony, balancing it on the wrought-iron railing. For just a second I looked down, four stories, where the Grand Canal shimmered below in the darkness, jewels of light reflected from the hotels and buildings on the other side. Venice never looks lovelier than when you’re using it to dispose of a body.

Then Gobi shoved the trunk over the edge and it fell.

There was a long silence followed by a splash below just as the hotel door swung open behind us. When I looked back at Gobi, she was already climbing over the railing into the night.

‘What are you doing?’

She let go of the railing and disappeared.