The Losing Game (2 page)

Lucas had kept the card in his breast pocket, more as a letter of introduction than an aid to his memory. He’d learned the address and how to get there by heart.

The sign on Le Plaisir’s door said: “Strictly No Under 18s. Ring the bell. Look up at the camera.” Beneath the script, the signage was repeated in Braille.

Lucas took half a step back, allowing the camera to hone in on his face. With a gloved hand, he pressed the brass button. A buzzer sounded inside, and the door opened with a smooth click.

Lucas closed it slowly behind him, making sure it wouldn’t slam, giving him a moment to steel his nerves and scope the place out.

He was the only customer. Behind the counter the assistant, a young person of unclear gender, flicked through a magazine. A messy crop of black hair, shirt, tie, and waistcoat suggested a young man. Soft features and a smooth chin suggested a woman. They were petite and delicately attractive, and from the shape of their features and the light sandy tone of their skin, East Asian by descent, possibly Korean. Quite a rarity in this part of England, despite the immigration after the collapse of the North.

The assistant looked up and offered Lucas a brief but welcoming smile. He nodded in return, casually, like anyone would. Le Plaisir’s interior was designed with the casual browser in mind.

The subtle smell of incense complemented amber lighting from spotlights and domed pendants. An expansive and highly polished oak table filled most of the central floor space. On top of the table, baskets of toiletry items, oils, and candles surrounded an artful display of hardcover coffee-table books and calendars.

Glass-fronted cabinets lined the walls. Inside the nearest, on the middle shelf, a splendorous cranberry glass phallus rested on the tripod of its tip and testes. Lucas marveled at the craftsmanship.

Idly dragging his fingers over this and that, Lucas’s gaze lingered on the muscular form of the man gracing the cover of the
Best Male Nudes 2036
calendar. It was far preferable to the
Sights of Asia
on his kitchen wall, mocking him since January—month after month of temples, forests, and mountains. In a fortnight it would be time for December’s grand finale, a regiment of Chinese lanterns strung between two rows of buildings in the heart of Shanghai.

Lucas had thought to travel to these places, to see them firsthand, but life always seemed to get in his way. First, the spiraling cost of the airfare and caring for his elderly parents. Then, after they passed, getting his career back on track. Now, this business with Grace.

“There are some other calendars on the rack over here. My name’s Kit, if you need any help.” The shop assistant (who’d spoken in a distinctly feminine voice, though Lucas knew better than to draw any meaning from it) pointed to the spotlighted corner by the front counter.

“Thank you.” Lucas weighed his mounting trepidation against a long evening of regret. “But actually….”

“You’d like to see the back room?”

“I’m not sure. Is that where I’ll find Mr. Okoro?”

Kit perked up. “You want to see Dante?”

“I have a card.” Lucas took it from his breast pocket and approached. “A friend of mine, a lady called Avery Lister, gave it to me.” The card vibrated in the air between them.

Kit peered over the counter but didn’t touch. “All right. Wait here.”

They hopped off the stool and pressed a button on the side of a wooden box mounted on the wall. The box, some sort of archaic intercom, crackled as they spoke. “Dante. You have a walk-in.”

Lucas didn’t hear the reply. Kit returned to their perch behind the counter. “He’ll be right with you.”

Lucas edged toward the archway left of the counter, angling to see the contents of the back room without actually stepping inside.

“The off-the-peg stuff. Harnesses, gags, whips, masks. That sort of thing,” Kit said, not looking up from their magazine. “And a changing room.”

Until a couple of years ago, Lucas would have described his sexual liaisons as conventional. Since then, they’d fizzled more than he cared to think about. A calendar of male nudes was enough to send his pulse racing. The mere thought—

In spite of his attempt to appear nonchalant, Lucas didn’t doubt for a second that Kit could see him blushing. They could probably feel the furnace radiating from his cheeks.

Lucas developed a sudden and compelling interest in the cornices and ceiling roses, carved from a dark-stained wood. Identically carved architraves, garlands of roses intertwined with thorny stems, framed the archway to the back room and the closed door to its left.

The door opened, and a man Lucas assumed to be Dante Okoro sauntered in. “This building was originally a knocking shop. Strictly by invitation, mostly to landed gentry and local politicians.” He waved a dismissive hand upward. “Hence the roses.”

Lucas didn’t understand. Okoro—with his black, piercing eyes and unapologetic cheekbones—had thrown him off-balance before he’d had a chance to recite a word of his carefully rehearsed speech. Avery had said
good-looking
. Lucas had prepared himself for the usual sort of attractiveness. Not this.

“
Sub rosa
?” Okoro said. “Under the rose?”

“I’m sorry?” Sweat broke out on Lucas’s palms, on the back of his neck, and under his arms. He pulled off his gloves and shoved them into his pocket.

Okoro strolled past the cabinetry, circling the floor, all the while regarding Lucas like a shark closing in on his prey. He moved like liquid.

Lucas couldn’t begin to guess at his age. His skin, the color of burnished bronze, was smooth and flawless. His neat, trimmed beard and close-cropped black hair didn’t show a trace of gray. Maybe he was the same age as Lucas. Thirty? Yet a certainty in his manner and a timelessly cut black pin-striped suit suggested more maturity.

“The roses on the ceiling and around the doors symbolize secrecy,” Okoro said. “Confidentiality.”

“I thought they symbolized love.” Lucas cringed.

“Your choice. I honor both.” Okoro passed the cabinet holding the cranberry glass phallus, not giving it a second glance. “What can I do for you?”

“My friend, Avery Lister, said you might be able to help me. It’s….” Lucas searched his hands for the right word. “A private matter. Delicate.”

“You know Avery?” Okoro’s eyes widened, fractionally. “I haven’t seen her in months. How do you know each other?”

“We met a couple of years ago at a class. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Lucas shivered involuntarily as Okoro drew nearer. Not from fear. Oh no. Lucas’s skin was singing, raising up the hairs on his arms. He was struck by a boyhood memory of iron filings and the sweep of a magnet. A dark-gray iron thing, at first cold and brittle but turning wondrous and warm in the grip of his hand.

Focus on Grace.

“A class? What kind of class would that be?” There was something unsettling in his tone. Surprise? Derision?

“Pottery.”

Okoro’s mouth slipped into a smile that bared strong, straight teeth. “Pottery?” Sonorous laughter followed. “Well, she always was good with her hands.”

“Actually, neither of us were much good. We gave up throwing clay and went to a bar in Roseport Quay instead.”

“I see.”

Lucas began to deflate. Hiring someone to plan him the perfect murder had sounded like a fine idea with a few cocktails searing through his blood. It had continued to sound borderline reasonable for someone with his kind of motive, all the following week. Presently, however, standing in front of a man who looked like he could deliver, and more to the point, might enjoy the challenge? What the bloody hell had he been thinking?

At last, Okoro said, “What did Avery tell you about me? About what I do?”

“Not much. She said she’d been friends with your father and that she’s known you since you were a boy. Other than that, all she gave me was your card.” The one advertising Le Plaisir and its highly acclaimed, bespoke accoutrements.

Having walked the entire perimeter of the shop floor, his focus remaining on Lucas the entire time, Okoro closed in. Close enough for Lucas to feel his breath on his cheek, to smell the citrus scent of his aftershave.

“Can I see?”

Lucas held out the card. Okoro examined and returned it. Lucas slipped it into his coat pocket with his gloves.

This wasn’t the way their meeting was meant to go. Lucas had spent enough time on the other side of the desk—questioning, assessing, and deciding whether a candidate was a suitable fit—to know he only had seconds to project the right impression.

Lucas recalled a dozen workshops. Professionalism. Synergistic compatibility. Strategic dynamism. So many buzzwords he’d diligently memorized and bandied about in Human Resources for the last eight years like he was passing out party favors. He’d never had a clue what those words meant, had he?

Rooted to the spot, locked in Okoro’s sights, Lucas gulped audibly. But Okoro’s stance relaxed. He took a step to the side and held out his hand, palm up.

“Why don’t you come through to my office, Mister…?”

Lucas turned his head to glance at the closed shop door and back again to Okoro. “Green. My name is Lucas Green.”

“Why don’t you come through to my office, Mr. Green?” Okoro repeated.

If Lucas hadn’t trusted Avery, he’d have fled. Not that he could quell the voice in his head saying,
But how well does Avery really know Dante Okoro? Can you trust him
?

No one waited for Lucas outside or at home. The only people who might have missed him should he fail to return were buried in the cold, hard ground. His mum and dad and his poor sister Grace, taken brutally too soon. In Lucas’s shoes, she’d have been through Okoro’s office door like a shot. But, to his dismay, Lucas wasn’t like Grace. He never had been.

Which begged the question, why wasn’t he standing in the travel agency in Roseport Quay, planning a trip to Asia, instead of plotting his revenge?

The sound of some noisy youths whistling and catcalling in the street outside carried through the shopfront glass. Someone banged on the window. The gang were probably too young to enter Le Plaisir, or too afraid. Certainly too immature. Lucas didn’t much fancy having to walk past them, which he would have to do if he left now.

He stepped forward and reached for the welcoming clasp of Okoro’s outstretched hand.

OKORO’S HANDSHAKE
was brief but warm, his grip firm but gentle. Lucas wouldn’t allow himself to draw any meaning from it, nor from the way Okoro briefly brushed his thumb over his skin. (He hadn’t imagined that. It had happened, hadn’t it?)

From the corner of his eye, he noticed the shop assistant look up from their magazine, mouth open as if to protest. Okoro must have seen it too.

“Close the shop, Kit. And tell Lois to bring us some tea.” To Lucas, he said, “You do drink tea?”

Lucas couldn’t stand tea. “Yes, of course.”

They went through the rose-framed door into a dimly lit corridor running parallel to the “back room” of whips and harnesses. At its end, a dark-wood paneled door framed by a modern slim-line security scanner opened into Okoro’s office.

Okoro went first, saying, “Just walk through normally.”

He stood to one side, presumably observing a screen something like the ones they had at the offices where Lucas worked.

There was nothing for Okoro to see except the coins in Lucas’s pocket. Lucas wasn’t armed, wired, or tracked. The light above his head flashed green. Plush carpet gave beneath his feet, and the rich aroma of decades’ worth of polish enveloped him. The office was even more sumptuously decorated than the shop.

“Take a seat, Mr. Green.”

“Please, call me Lucas.”

Okoro took the tiniest of bows. “Then you must call me Dante.”

Lucas shed his sheepskin coat and bundled it over the arm of a brocade wingback. He was glad to be out of it, but at the same time felt exposed and underdressed. His shirt and trousers were decent department-store quality. Here they looked cheap and a disrespectful sort of casual.

Lucas eased slowly into the chair. On the far side of the room, chocolate velvet curtains, worn and faded to gold at the inside edges, hung on either side of a tall window. The silhouette of a fence and dense shrubbery filled the view through the window’s lower half. Above, thick indigo clouds hung in the night sky.

Okoro—
Dante
—flicked a brass switch on the wall next to the fireplace and blue flames, quickly turning to orange, leapt and danced in the hearth. Not a real log fire, then, but authentic-looking enough to fool anyone who hadn’t witnessed the ignition. Next, he switched on the two table lamps on either side of the straight-backed couch, and took a seat at one end, opposite Lucas.

The whole room was an homage to a bygone era. Modern conveniences dressed in vintage clothing. Dante included. He sat with his arms stretched across the back of the sofa.

“There. That’s better. Now, how can I help you?”

Fresh sweat prickled under Lucas’s armpits. He kept his elbows close to his sides, regretful of the thin cotton shirt already sticking to his back.

Dante gave Lucas a moment and continued. “I doubt there’s a kink or a fetish I haven’t accommodated. You needn’t be shy. Everything you say in here will be treated in the strictest confidence. You have my word.”

Oh God. No.

Dante had misunderstood. And why wouldn’t he have? He owned a sex shop. He sold custom gear. Nothing on his card said anything about…. But Avery had been very clear. She’d said he could help Lucas.

Before Lucas could answer Dante, the office door opened and a young person, who looked uncannily like Kit the shop assistant, entered the room. They carried a tray laden with a teapot, cups, saucers, and a plate of small cupcakes dusted with sugar. Their hair was a few centimeters longer than Kit’s but styled just as boyishly. They wore a navy silk blouse trimmed with lace at the cuffs and a dash of plum lipstick.

“Thank you, Lois. You should join us. I believe Mr. Green has an interest in engaging my services.” Dante turned to Lucas. “She has an intuitive eye.”