The Losing Game (4 page)

“
No
.” Dante leapt from his chair, rounding the table, close enough to Lucas he could have grabbed him and shaken some sense into his lithesome frame. “You won’t. You can’t.”

“You don’t know me. You don’t know what I can do.”

Lucas’s pain and grief was still fresh and palpable. It physically hurt Dante to say to him, “Forget Shaw. Forget you came here, and I’ll do the same. No harm done.”

“No harm done?
No harm done
?” Lucas jabbed his finger against Dante’s chest. “Pardon me, Mr. Okoro, but fuck you.”

As if on cue, the mantel clock struck the half hour. Lucas pushed past Dante and rushed for the door. Lois followed.

Heart pounding, Dante wove around the furniture to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large gin with a splash of tonic.

Kit came in through the private door, flopped onto the sofa, and pushed a whole cupcake into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed quickly, then said, “What did he want?”

“To avenge his sister’s death, by murdering the man who ran her over with his car.”

She scrambled upright and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What the hell?”

Dante explained, “He’s prepared to do the killing part. He wanted me to plan it for him.”

“
What
? What did you say?”

“What do you think? I said no.”

Kit’s mouth hung open, as if the thought, the mere
concept
that anyone might set Dante the challenge of planning a murder was too big for her head. Dante downed liquor, as if that would help him forget. Forget Lucas Green. Forget Flynn. Forget the life before.

Kit reached for another cake. She held it to her lips but didn’t eat.

“Why would he think you could help him with something like that? How…?”

“Avery sent him.”

Kit didn’t remark, as if that explained everything. Thankfully. But after swallowing a mouthful of cake, she said, “Do you think he might do it?”

“I don’t know.”

Driven to it, a man could do any number of dreadful things beyond what he thought himself capable. Dante knew that as well as anyone.

No. Not true.

He knew it better.

LUCAS SKIDDED
on the pavement as he fled Le Plaisir and Dante Okoro, unbalanced by a gutful of anger and humiliation.

Rounding the corner out of Old Roseport, he slowed. He walked to the bus stop, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. On the bus, he sat near the front, behind the staircase, out of sight of the driver and the security camera.

Of course Dante Okoro had turned him down. He’d expected it. What he hadn’t expected was for it to wind him like a punch in the stomach, like the man had spat on Grace as she lay on the roadside dying, waiting and hoping someone would see her and get help. Fist clenched, Lucas ground his knuckle into the rivets on the side panel of the bus until the skin broke. He got off at the next stop.

Lucas walked blindly, from the top end of Roseport Quay into Landport. In truth, the moment he alighted from the bus, he knew where he was headed.

He sidestepped the tattered bin bags spewing their contents across the pavement. He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact with the occasional wanderers: prostitutes and pimps, addicts and dealers, good-time boys and gals and androgynes. No cameras monitored these lowly streets. Half the streetlights didn’t work either.

The Nag’s Head dominated the street corner. It had been popular once with Roseport Island’s glut of sailors, plus students and all manner of outliers on the lookout for company. Music sounded through the open door. Lucas hadn’t been here for years, but the shabby facade hadn’t changed. Maybe the inside would also be the same.

As he entered, a couple of heads turned in Lucas’s direction, then away again. He targeted the widest space at the bar and leaned in with a note.

The barman—a bear with tattoos covering his face and neck—noticed him immediately. “What can I get you?”

“A pint of bitter.” He scanned the taps. “Bangers.”

“Good choice. You must be local.”

“Used to be.”

A voice to Lucas’s left piped in, “Bitter? I never would have guessed. I prefer something sweet myself.”

A young man with red glitter nails looked Lucas up and down with a sultry sweep of dark lashes. He tipped his empty cocktail glass in Lucas’s direction and moved closer, enough that Lucas could smell the honey-scented wax slicking back his hair. A carefully placed cliché of a black curl nestled on one side of his forehead.

The man was handsome and sure of himself. Not as intriguing as Dante, and not as polished, but he had a hint of promise in his eyes.

“What are you having?” Lucas said.

“Malibu and pineapple.”

Lucas smiled, and it felt strange. Unworked muscles pulled at his cheeks.

“What?” The young man slid his glass onto the bar, in the direction of the bartender, and pouted his plump red lips as if he was terribly offended. “That was my dear old grandma’s favorite drink. She was from the islands.”

“The Caribbean?”

“No.” He laughed heartily. “The Thames. Born on Sheppey, grew up on Canvey.”

Lucas joined in the laughter, automatically, and from somewhere deep in his belly. “And now here you are on Roseport.”

And here I am. Flirting.
Wasn’t that a turn up for the books?

The bartender unobtrusively exchanged the drinks for Lucas’s twenty. The young man—in his head, Lucas called him Malibu—clinked his glass against Lucas’s.

“Cheers.”

Lucas returned the gesture and sat on the bar stool next to his newfound companion. Tonight, as far as his other plans were concerned, was a wash. He couldn’t do anything about anything. He might as well kick back for a change, since the offer had fallen—almost literally—onto his lap.

Lucas and Malibu talked about nothing. The words were a device to allow them to look each other over. To work out whether the drink was just a drink or a prelude. Lucas really only listened when Malibu explained that the Nag’s Head had changed hands recently.

“The loos are off-limits now, if you get my drift.” He drained his glass. “The landlord’s got ideas about sprucing the place up.”

Cracked plaster clung to the walls, threadbare upholstery covered the booth benches, and several unsavory-looking stains added to the general nastiness of the sticky burgundy carpet. Already some of the ragtag assortment of drinkers loafing about the place were precariously close to horizontal, and it wasn’t yet seven o’clock.

The landlord had his work cut out.

Some people don’t know when they’ve bitten off more than they could chew,
Lucas thought, swirling the last of his Bangers bitter around the bottom of his glass.

“Want to go somewhere?” Malibu asked quietly. He looked like he half expected Lucas to turn him down.

“Like where?”

“My place. I’ve got a bedsit on Festive Road.”

“Maybe.” Lucas wasn’t completely naïve. This could be a setup. But he didn’t have anything of value with him except the cash in his wallet—sixty in notes. He hadn’t brought his handset. He had nothing on him worth stealing.

“I’m not going to ask you for money,” Malibu said. “I’m not a skank.”

“I didn’t think you were. I just hadn’t planned on….” No, that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true at all. “I didn’t bring anything. Protection.”

“That’s all right.” Malibu slipped on a vintage denim jacket over his tee and patted the breast pocket. “I’ve got it covered.”

They left immediately. Malibu’s jacket offered scant protection against the cold. He turned up his collar and walked quickly, looking straight ahead, never down, lightly sidestepping every obstacle from the pub to his house. Lucas followed in the wake of his sweet perfume, eyes darting from the pavement, to the street, to the play of Malibu’s buttocks against his tight jeans.

Muffled pulses of life—cheery voices, music, dogs barking—drifted into the street through curtained windows, from house, after house, after house. They stopped outside a narrow terrace, which was conspicuously silent, with an unlit passageway to one side.

“Down here.” Malibu took out his handset and shone the top light at the ground. “Mind the cracks. The one at the far end almost cost me a tooth when I first moved in here.”

Lucas took a final glance in either direction, along the empty street, and followed Malibu through the passageway. It opened into a courtyard. A rickety metal staircase clung to the back wall and led up to a door.

“You’ve got your own entrance?”

“Yeah. Nice, isn’t it? It’s the only reason I live in this dump of a neighborhood. That, and it’s cheap, and no one round here is interested in spying on each other.”

The door opened into a tiny hallway, barely big enough for them both. Malibu switched on the light and opened a second door into a small, rather untidy bedsit-style living area. It smelled of cheap vanilla candles. Artificial. Lucas folded his coat over the back of the lone chair.

“Come here,” Malibu said, slipping out of his jacket and letting it fall to the floor. He took Lucas’s hands in his and lifted them to his lips. “You’ve cut yourself.”

He kissed the wound on Lucas’s right knuckle, without breaking eye contact. The cut wasn’t bleeding anymore. Malibu kissed away the last of the sting.

Lucas hadn’t been touched with this generous kind of affection for a long time. He rocked back on his heels and gasped for breath. Malibu chased him for a warm, wet kiss on the mouth. He tasted of Malibu rum and pineapple—of course he did—and it made Lucas smile. And burn.

If, up to this moment, Lucas had been in any way halfhearted, he wasn’t any longer. Driving lust ignited as instantly and quickly as the flames in Dante Okoro’s office fire. Lucas bustled Malibu to the bed, tearing off his clothes and Malibu’s as they went tumbling. Lucas closed his eyes, consumed by the sudden sensations rocketing through his nervous system. Roaming hands, pinching and grabbing, needy and urgent.

Malibu’s cock tasted salty, musky. Lucas sucked Malibu mercilessly, then bent Malibu’s knees to his chest and took him fast and deep. Malibu’s eyelids fluttered open and closed. Between sighs, he muttered filthy curses that sent sparks up Lucas’s spine.

The bed creaked, and the headboard banged against the wall. Lucas didn’t slow. Malibu came hard, forearms pressed to the headboard. Lucas swirled his fingertips in a globule of the cooling semen pooled at the base of Malibu’s sternum and sucked them into his mouth. With the sharp, salty taste of him on his lips, Lucas thrust out his last, eyes shut tight.

Fuck.

He pulled out slowly, removed the condom, tied off the end, and slumped facedown at Malibu’s side. Malibu rolled a cigarette. Lucas rolled onto his back.

“My name’s Adam, if you’re interested.”

Adam lit up and held out the mouth end of the rollup, offering Lucas a drag. Lucas declined both the cigarette and the unspoken invitation to give Adam his name.

“I’ve got to go soon,” he said.

“I thought so.”

Lucas waited for Adam to finish his smoke, as his skin cooled and his heart slowed. Next door, someone thumped noisily down the stairs. Outside, in the distance, car tires screeched, and a siren wailed.

Above the window, the wallpaper had peeled away from a patch of damp. Only then did Lucas notice the musty stench, creeping over the smell of sex and sweat and perfume. Suddenly he longed for home and his own bed.

While Lucas hastily dressed, Adam wrapped himself in a thin, black cotton robe and sat in the chair, one leg crossed over the other. He rolled a second cigarette he didn’t light, but held it between his forefinger and thumb, poised as if he was about to throw it, like a dart.

“Will you do me a favor?” he asked.

“What?”

“Answer me one question. Honestly.”

“That depends on the question.” A small rush of heat ran up Lucas’s neck. He wasn’t obliged, and he didn’t have to be honest. But still.

“What are you looking for?” Adam’s mouth was less attractive without the sheen of lip gloss. His eyes were kind, though. Dark, dark brown and wide open, like infinite space and possibility. Lucas softened.

“Who says I’m looking for anything?”

“You are. I know you are. No one like you turns up at the Nag’s Head unless you’re running away, or you’re looking for something. I’m thinking the latter. Am I right?”

“I’m not running away.”

“Okay. So what are you looking for, Mr. Sad Gray Eyes?”

Lucas took some time to reply, not because he didn’t want to answer but because he wasn’t sure he knew what the honest answer was. What came out of his mouth took him by surprise.

“A gun.”

Adam spluttered and laughed. “I thought you were going to say something deep and meaningful.”

“You said to be honest.”

Adam lit his rollup, took a long, slow drag, and blew out the smoke in rings. “Why would a sweetheart like you want a gun?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

“Guns can kill. You wave one about, you’ve got to be prepared to fire it.”

“Well, yes.”

Lucas looked about for his second shoe. Adam pointed to it with his foot. He had painted toenails. Lucas hadn’t noticed that before.

Adam took another drag. He spoke on his exhale, the words leaving his mouth with small puffs of smoke. “What if I told you I can get you a gun?”

Bent on one knee, tying his shoelace, Lucas scanned Adam’s shabby room. It could have passed for a theater dressing room, with the lights around the mirror, the cosmetics and draped scarves.

“A real one?”

“Yes, a real one. What do you take me for?”

Typical. If Lucas had gone directly to Landport this evening instead of detouring to Old Roseport, he could have saved himself a gutful of humiliation. If Adam was for real, that was.

“How much?” Lucas asked, silently bemoaning his present lack of funds and the likelihood that if he left empty-handed he wouldn’t find the balls to return. “I don’t have much cash on me.”

“Payment is negotiable.”

Lucas wasn’t sure what that meant until he saw Adam eyeing his coat.