convention or another. Piss-drunk authors would tell her their best ideas, then forget the conversations in the morning. Maybe Lee saw The… A. X as his next blockbuster, his big move into true crime. The more she thought about it, the more sense it made.
She marched over to room 16, started banging on the door.
If Sebastian thought riding in an airplane with Yanni had been a dreadful experience, and spending time with his family in Astoria had been painful, then riding in a car with him was a full-blown nightmare. Had the fellow heard that there’d been an invention – a true breakthrough – called deodorant? Lordy, the smell of the man! And he didn’t even have the decency to open the passenger-side window. He had all the controls on his side of the car, and he insisted on riding with the windows closed and no air conditioning. He mentioned something about allergies or whatnot, but Sebastian knew it was only to inflict maximum torture on him.
They passed a rest area and Sebastian had never been so excited to see a McDonald’s in his entire life. Naturally the mad Greek wouldn’t let them stop, though. He said something about “making good time” and “saving gas,” but Sebastian figured he was just being an ass.
They’d left at the crack of dawn and arrived in Attica at around noon. Oh, lucky them! Talk about a party town! Sebastian honestly didn’t know how his life had descended to this horrid state. A few weeks ago he’d been living it up on Santorini and now he was in a place that made those Western ghost towns you saw in the movies seem lively, being dragged around by the Greek from hell.
Their room wasn’t ready. That’s correct – room, singular. Yanni insisted on sharing a room, even sharing a king-size bed, so Sebastian couldn’t slip away.
“Oh, come on now, you can trust me,” Sebastian said as they stood at the front desk. The sarcasm couldn’t have been thicker.
“We sleep in same bed,” Yanni insisted, “and you wear handcuffs.”
The clerk heard this and with a concerned look said, “Uh, sir, this is a family motel.”
“ Please,” Sebastian said. “I’ll treat myself to a nice-looking chappie every once in a while like any good un, but I’d rather die than be a bottom for this cretin.”
“Cretan?” Yanni said, deeply insulted. “Yanni is not from Crete, my family live on Santorini nine hundred years.” Sebastian apologized for misremembering.
They waited in – where else? – the car until the room had been serviced. As soon as they got in, there was a hammering at the door. Sebastian answered it, saw a woman there, full figured, longish brown hair – attractive enough, but something about her made him think, lesbian.
She was saying, “Son of a bitch. You think you can steal The… A.X. from me, you fucking British bastard.”
Sebastian replied with an ultra polite, “Sorry, have we met?”
“Yeah, at last year’s ThrillerFest. I told you how much I loved Jack Fucking Reacher, remember?”
Going along he said, “Oh, of course, silly me. How could I forget?” He had, of course, no idea who she was, but he said, “I’d invite you in, my sweet, but alas, I’m otherwise occupied.”
Then Yanni was behind him, naturally, never more than Karelia spit away, and he asked angrily, “Who is this cunt?’
Sebastian said, “I say, old chap, steady on.”
The woman looked at the Greek and said, “What did you call me?”
Sebastian, if not always ready, was most definitely nearly always prepared, had taken some hooch from the Greek’s home, and said, “Now let’s all calm down. Come in, gell, have a drink, and dammit, we’ll thrash this out between us like civilized human beings.”
“Where you get booze in this shithole?” Yanni asked, and the woman asked, “The fuck is a gell?”
But they took it inside, neither of them the sort to turn down a drink.
Sebastian got the two plastic toothbrushing cups from the bathroom and produced a battered tin cup he still carried from his Chatwin days, he really believed he’d lived like ol’ Bruce. Then, with a flourish, out of the Gladstone bag came a bottle of scotch. Sebastian murmured, “Alas, we’re all out of ice, the maid has the day off.”
He poured lethal measures and nobody complained. He toasted, “To jolly good company, what?”
No one answered him.
They drank in silence, getting the good stuff to ignite in their system. When they’d killed the scotch and the contents of the room’s minibar, the woman said, “You’re not fucking Lee Child.”
Sebastian nearly laughed at the double entendre.
“Child?” Yanni asked. “Where child?”
Then Sebastian, scotch calm, said, “Ah, you’ve rumbled me, the game is up as old Sherlock used to say, or was that afoot? I’m actually Lee’s half brother. We don’t get on, and truly, I’m chuffed with his success.”
Yanni, tired of a conversation he was having trouble following, pointed his finger at the woman, asked, “Why are you here?”
She’d drunk the scotch way too fast and it loosened her tongue.
“I thought he was stealing my book,” she said, wagging a finger in Sebastian’s direction.
“Your book? What are you talking about?” Sebastian asked.
She told them all about some bloody awful book she was writing about Max Fisher and Angela, and about the murders Fisher had committed, and how he’d apparently become a feared man in prison. Sounded like a real winner all right. The punters would surely be rushing to the stores to buy that one.
Then she told them about a prison break at midnight.
Sebastian had a lightbulb moment, said, “Prison break?”
“Yeah, there’re going to be riots, big riots. I’m a big riot!” She looked at her glass. “What’s in this shit anyway?”
Sebastian egged her on, going, “So about the prison break…”
“Oh, yeah, it’s at midnight tonight, at least that’s what The… A.X. said. The… A.X.!” She laughed. “You believe that’s what he calls himself now? He put a ‘the’ in front of his name and he has initials. Initials! Is he a character or what? I’m gonna make a fortune on this book and Pulitzer, look out. Oh, and Angela, I’m dying to meet that crazy bitch. She’s going to be in the getaway car with some IRA guy. Is this gonna be a trip or what?”
Yanni put a switchblade to the woman’s throat said, “Shut up, cunt, and take us to this she-devil who killed my cousin. Now.”
The woman continued to smile drunkenly until her eyes focused on the knife and she started to scream. Yanni backhanded her in the face and knocked her to the floor.
Sebastian upended his tin cup and, patting its bottom, drained the last trickle of scotch. “Oh, lordy,” he said, “was that really necessary?”
Eighteen
Let the riots begin…
Max was dozing when the riot began. He was gently stirred by Rufus who said, “It’s on, boss.”
Max, still groggy, heard what sounded like the seventh circle of hell and smelled smoke, lots of smoke. He asked, “The riot?”
A click sounded and their cell door slid open.
Rufus said, “They already got in the control room, yo. The man, he gonna come down hard, we got to move, know what I’m sayin’, make it to the laundry truck. Once they bring in the troops, we gonna be fried meat.”
He handed Max a bandana, said, “Rap the rag round your mouth, breathe through your nose, and stay real close, yo. Gonna be biblical out there.”
Max was terrified and exhilarated all at once, and the bandana, shit, he felt like The Boss. He grabbed the bottle of Chivas, swallowed a fiery amount and handed it to Rufus who drained the rest. Then Max picked up a broomstick they’d stowed under the bottom bunk, broke it in half, said, “Rock ‘n’ roll.”
The tier was chaotic, cons running everywhere, and Max saw one of the guards being held by a Crip, broken bottle to his neck. The Crip looked at Max, winked, then slashed the guard’s throat.
Max felt the Chivas rebel and he let Rufus get ahead as he bent over, gagging. Then, out of the smoke, came
