a.m., on the day after Begin had been given instructions to start making enquiries into the current state of play and whereabouts of Tracey Greenwood.
‘ Sit down,’ Bussola nodded. Begin came into the office and took a seat on the couch, pushing the door to behind him, though it did not close properly.
‘ I had to pull in some goodwill on this one, Mario. It’ll cost.’
‘ Pay.’
Begin nodded. ‘Apparently Tracey Greenwood presented herself to Myrna Rosza at Kruger Investigations and stated she wanted to testify against Gilbert in some old murder case in England.’
‘ Why Kruger Investigations?’
Begin shrugged. ‘Maybe she doesn’t trust the authorities. Anyway, she’s now with that black bitch Rosza, who’s babysitting her until the English cops get here. There’s a detective due to land at MIA later today to escort the girl back to Britain — a guy called Danny Furness.’
‘ Where’s the girl now, as we speak?’
Begin heaved a sigh. ‘With Rosza, place unknown.’
Bussola gave his assistant a withering look. ‘Make it a place known.’
‘ Working on it as we speak.’
Bussola ran a hand through his hair. ‘I want her dead, Ira. If you can negotiate a hand-over with Rosza, then all well and good.’
‘ I have an idea, a leverage tool we might use.’
Bussola waved a hand dismissively. ‘I believe in empowerment, Ira. Do it your way, but if it doesn’t work, kill the girl and then kill anyone else who causes any obstruction, cops included.’
At the study door there was the faintest whisper of a sigh, a movement… Begin leapt to his feet and jumped to the door.
No one there.
He gave a short laugh and closed it.
Felicity had been watching and waiting for Begin to go in and see her husband, and had then sneaked up to the door and listened to every word spoken between the two men. She had remained still, completely rigid, during the conversation, her ear literally at the crack in the door. Then her ribs twisted slightly and she could not prevent the squeak of pain escaping from her lips.
She spun out of sight in the dog-leg of the hallway just a moment before Begin poked his head out of the door, amazing herself how quickly she could move when she needed to, despite the present condition of her body.
Now she needed to get to a phone which wasn’t wired up. Something easier said than done.
Felicity’s activities had been very much curtailed since her recent blunder, and getting out of the house alone was now a major operation. Bussola was deeply suspicious of her, wanted to know where she was going, what she was doing, who she was seeing; he also made sure she was accompanied all the time.
Had she not been almost crippled by his beating, slipping away from a chaperone would have been relatively easy. Now she had to think up some other strategy, and double-quick too, for if she could not get away from the house, she’d be unable to warn Myrna of Bussola’s plans for the witness and possibly Myrna herself.
Ten minutes after his conversation with Begin, Bussola was again working by the poolside, his laptop connected up to the Internet where he was surfing the pornography pages. Felicity hovered with a complete lack of assertiveness, just in his view.
‘ Yeah?’ he said at length, not raising his head from the screen.
‘ Sweetheart, I need to get out,’ she said humbly.
Bussola stopped tapping at the keys. He regarded her sternly and she prepared herself for the ‘why’ question.
It came. ‘Why?’
‘ I just wanna drift around a few clothes shops, cheer myself up a little, maybe try on a few things. I won’t buy anything.’ Not that she could. As part of her punishment, Bussola had chopped off all her credit. ‘Honey, please can I?’ she pined.
He then shocked her. ‘Yeah, you can. In fact, go and buy yourself something.’ He delved into his briefcase and extracted a wad of cash. He did not count it, just handed it over.
‘ Gee… thanks honey,’ she said genuinely, seduced by the sight of greenbacks. There must have been about fifteen hundred dollars.
‘ Pleasure, babe.’
Then she remembered who he was, what he had done to her and others, but nevertheless maintained her gratefulness. ‘You are really good to me.’
‘ Hey!’ he clicked his forefinger at her. ‘And don’t you forget it. Now get lost.’
His attention returned to the computer. Felicity limped painfully away, hearing Bussola’s voice call behind her. ‘Gus, you take my wife shopping, y’hear?’
Gus stood up. ‘Okay, boss.’ Felicity saw it was the bodyguard with the rather substantial appendages. It was horrendous to be horny and unable to do anything about it.
Ira Begin had not reached his exalted position in life without proper planning, taking into account all the imponderables of a situation, always making back-up plans for any contingency and ensuring they were in place should his initial course of action not succeed.
As was the case with the situation concerning Tracey Greenwood and Myrna Rosza.
He had quickly established how he was going to approach the problem. It would, as Bussola had suggested, be through a process of negotiation. If that failed, other tactics would drop into place. But what he needed to know before anything happened at all was the exact holding position of the girl.
Once he had that, he would swing into action. ‘Captain Crenshaw, Homicide, please,’ Begin said into the phone.
‘ May I ask who is calling?’
‘ I’m his chiropractor.’
‘ Thank you. Please hold the line.’
A series of clicks, a slight pause, then, ‘Crenshaw, Homicide.’
‘ Ahh, Captain, this is your chiropractor. I was just wondering if you’d made that appointment yet.’
‘ Hey, I haven’t forgotten.’
‘ It is urgent. You know how tight your spine is.’
‘ Yeah, I’ll get back to you soon with details.’
‘ And, of course, you will feel great benefit.’ Begin hung up, slightly frustrated. He desperately needed to know where Tracey was being held, otherwise he might start to look stupid.
He picked his phone up again and dialled a zero. He ordered someone from the gatehouse to bring a car up for him. He had to get out and see someone, pronto.
Gus was sticking to Felicity like a limpet, not difficult in her present condition. Dark glasses covering her bruised face, she was moving slowly around the Bal Harbor shops on Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, where high-class names were in abundance — Saks, Carrier, Hermes et al. Not much was priced below four hundred dollars and an average price in some shops was four thousand.
‘ Gus, why don’t you fuck of?’ Felicity suggested. ‘I’m staying in and around these shops, going nowhere else. What about you and me meet back here in an hour, say? I ain’t gonna tell Mario… but you’re going to be bored shitless because all I’m going to do is drift around dress shops.’
‘ Uh-huh. With respect, but no way, Mrs Bussola. Boss says I’ve got to stay with you and I’m going to do just that.’
Felicity shrugged.
Gus was a simple son of a bitch and she doubted if she could shake his dog-like determination to follow orders to the letter. She would just have to look for another opportunity and grasp it when it came.
