Ник Картер - The Liquidator

I raised a hand to adjust my sunglasses, and the waiter hovering nearby mistook the gesture for an order; in a moment he had another ouzo in front of me. He was a young man, barely out of his teens, and as he set the drink down he glanced toward the girl’s table, then into the back of the taverna, his eyebrows working furiously as though he were doing an imitation of Groucho Marx at his most lascivious. Before I realized what he was doing, he also put down a glass of the wine the girl was drinking, then hustled away before I could object.

She was back almost as soon as he had left, sliding into the seat opposite me. Before saying a word she took a sip of the wine, gave a low, gusty sigh of appreciation and leaned back in the chair. It was only then that she looked at me.

“You are the one who has the car?” she asked. Her accent was emphatic, but she seemed to be comfortable with the English language.

“I have one,” I agreed. The Volkswagen was parked close by, in plain sight of our table.

“I thought it must be yours,” she said matter-of-factly. “The rental plates, and the fact that you are an American.”

“Does it show that much?”

She shrugged, making a show of indifference. “Oh, one learns to tell.” She looked around at the other nearby tables. “Those over there, they come from England.” She nodded slightly to indicate a middle-aged couple sipping vermouths at a shaded table. “He has retired and devotes himself to whiskey; look at those ruby cheeks! And any woman who looks like that, with a face like a hatchet and that fantastic tweed suit here in the sunlight of Pirgos! Could one imagine they come from...” She waved a frustrated hand in the air. “Argentina?”

I had to smile. “Not likely.”

She put her elbows on the table and leaned toward me, giving me all the wattage of her smile as though she had just discovered something totally enchanting. “So you have the car?” She glanced toward the VW.

“Yes. That’s mine.”

“Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind... I lost my ride.”

“So I noticed.”

“It is just a little public beach, not far away. Those fellows in the boat, they invited me to come water-skiing with them and I said why not.” Her shoulders were going up and down now like pistons on a bunch of locomotive wheels. “But they don’t know how to run that boat, you know? Fools! Coming right into the harbor like that... you saw?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I left them; I do not trust them even to take me back to the little hotel on the beach where I am staying. So I am... what do you call it? Forlorn?”

“Not exactly, but you have the right idea.”

She leaned across the table toward me. Standard move, I thought, as her breasts pushed against the nubby fabric of her shift. “You are long in Pirgos?” she asked.

“I don’t expect to be.”

“Oh. Where do you go from here?”

I pushed back a little in my chair. She was asking too many questions, even for a hooker. “Haven’t made up my mind yet,” I said carefully.

“Perhaps...” She was thrusting even closer to me, as though the table weren’t there. Her eyes glittered as though they had their own internal circuits. “Korfu wouldn’t be bad?”

“It’s a possibility,” I acknowledged. No sense in lying.

“Then perhaps you would like a companion?”

The question wasn’t exactly unexpected, but I didn’t have an answer. I looked at her for a long, deliberate moment before I replied. “You want to go to Korfu?”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Why?”

It was her turn to hesitate. She looked away, twitched those marvelous shoulders indifferently. “It is a nice place to be.”

“So is this.”

Suddenly she grinned, like a small girl caught in a harmless lie. “But Korfu is much better, no?”

I was getting some tingles. “Maybe...”

She reached across the table and touched my hand. “You would not mind having me as a companion for a few days, would you?” Her grin widened even more. “Mr. McKee?”

I hadn’t mentioned my name.

It was hardly the most subtle contact I’d ever made, and it worried me as I drove the girl to the hotel where she’d parked her clothes. We didn’t talk much in the car; I didn’t encourage her, and she didn’t offer. But before we arrived at the stretch of public beach, lined by small second-rate hotels, where she had taken off on her water-skiing expedition, I slowed down so I could look at her.

“So you’re Christina,” I said. She hadn’t even told me that much, so far.

“Of course. Do you have the boat?”

“I have one lined up, yes.”

“Then perhaps we should... court. Isn’t that the word you use?”

I frowned, “Maybe. Depends on what you mean.”

“I mean that we should be seen in public, obviously attracted to each other.” She took my hand, placed it on her warm, bare thigh. “Like this, no? American tourist, Greek girl on vacation. Isn’t that the way it was planned?”

She knew a hell of a lot more about the plans than I did, obviously, but she was making sense. “What do you hear from Alex?” I asked bluntly.

It was as though her skin suddenly turned to marble, cold as a tomb, but she made no move to push my hand away. “We will talk about that later.”

“Why not now?”

Her smile was like a death mask. “Because you and I, Mr. Daniel McKee, know nothing about Alex. For now we celebrate the discovery of each other, and tomorrow when we set out on our little cruise to Korfu will be time enough to speak of such matters.”

For an amateur, she seemed to have a pretty good idea of how things worked in my business. I had to go along with her. For the moment, anyway.

Her hotel was a featureless little place, pink stucco with a broad terrace overlooking the narrow strip of beach. We went through the ritual of having a drink at one of the terrace tables, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes a lot. Every once in a while I checked to see if anyone was paying attention to us, but saw no one who showed more than the expected interest in Christina. Finally, when the sun was about to plunge into the sea, she rose, pulling me to my feet with her.

“We will have dinner?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” she echoed. “Come for me in an hour and a half. Perhaps... you could arrange for us to sail tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t know.” I nuzzled her ear, as I was expected to, but mostly because I wanted to be sure no one could hear what I had to say. “Don’t rush it, sweetheart. I wouldn’t want to arrange to leave tomorrow until it’s damned obvious you’re coming with me.”

“So let’s make it obvious now.” She thumped her groin into mine in the most obvious manner, lifting a leg slightly to rub a bare knee against my thigh. It was only a brief gesture, but no one watching could have missed it. Or its implications.

“Yeah,” I said, and I had to clear my throat before any more words would come out. “We’ll be set to leave in the morning.”

She looked as good in her midnight-blue dress as she had in a bikini; it was obviously something bought off a rack, but Christina had the ability to make anything she wore look as though it had been run up for her by Givenchy. We went to a small restaurant near her hotel; it was nothing special, and as far as I could see there were no other foreign tourists there. When I was sure no one could overhear us I asked her if there was some reason why we were in this particular place.

She blushed, just a little through her tan.

“I really don’t know this town,” she said. “This is my first time here.”

I thought about that for a few seconds, then leaned back in my chair and grinned across the table at her. “Just a couple of tourists, aren’t we.”