John Matthews - Ascension Day

As Jac swung open the door to his apartment block, the hall light was already on, so he didn’t bother to push the timed switch.

Stratton said that he’d type up his report either when he got back that night or first thing in the morning. ‘It’ll be sitting here for you to pick up anytime after eleven tomorrow. Or, if you’re not going to Libreville until Sunday — I’ve got time to messenger it over to you.’

‘I’ve got a couple of calls to make first.’ Jac had heard that Rodriguez was finally in a fit state to be interviewed, but aside from him verifying Durrant’s account of the guards’ assault, there was another vital reason to see him. ‘I’ll phone you back as soon as I know when I’m heading out there.’

Jac had just reached the top of the entrance stairs as he signed off and was slightly breathless, not just from walking and talking at the same time, but from the adrenalin rush of Stratton’s news.

Only a second later the hallway light clicked off, plunging him into darkness.

Jac reached out and made contact with the wall to one side, feeling his way along. Three more paces to the corner of the corridor, then five or six feet the other side was the light switch. Surely he knew the positioning so off-by-heart now that he could locate it even in the pitch dark?

The fall of his own breathing seemed somehow heavier in the darkness — though suddenly he became aware of some other sound beyond it. He froze and held his breath, listening intently above his own rapid heartbeat. Someone else was there, only a few paces away. Moving stealthily towards him in the darkness.

Carmen Malastra was a Don from the old school: ‘Moustache Pete’s’, ‘Don Corleones’ and ‘Dinosaurs’ were amongst the many disparaging terms for them.

Malastra was keenly aware that, in order to survive, he should keep abreast of the times with at least one foot in the modern age: brutally wiping out anyone who got within a sniff of threatening his power base might not on its own be enough.

For years he’d resisted anything to do with modern electronics and computers: that was for his kids, correct that, grandkids , and whenever it played a part in his many business enterprises, well, that was what he employed geeks and nerds for.

Besides, at his age now, the wrong side of sixty, it wasn’t seemly, gentlemanly, to be seen playing around on a computer next to some kid with a nose ring and half his hair dyed flame-orange. He was of a different era, an age where suaveness and ‘style’ still had meaning.

But as soon as that thought hit him, he realized he’d found the key to keeping one foot in the modern age. He took three two-month night courses without saying a word to anyone; his Capos and staff thought that he must have a private lady friend. Very private.

And when he’d finished the courses, he could talk Java, HotMetal, firewalls and Macromedia with the best of them, his liver-spotted hands flying across the keyboard. But the rest of him still remained very much old school: formal evening suits for dinners and functions; black in winter, white in summer, often with a cummerbund, Aqua di Selva doused liberally on his neck and mixed with olive oil to coat his swept-back grey hair.

The scent of pine and olive trees: it reminded him of playing in the woodlands and farm-fields of his native Calabria when he was a little boy.

The first thing he’d done with his new computer knowledge was go through his accounts, see if he could siphon even more cash out of reach of the IRS. That was when he discovered that some siphoning was already taking place, but heading the other way from his Bay Tree Casino.

Nel-M phoned in the middle of this dilemma, claiming the hit on Ferrer and apologizing for same.

‘He was trying to stiff my Mr Roche outta some funds. Under normal circumstances, we’d of course have come to you first — let you deal with it your own way. But I got into an unfortunate argument with Ferrer, he went for his piece — and I was left with little choice.’

‘I see. Was unfortunate.’ Malastra’s attention was still mostly on his computer screen, trying to pick apart just how the scam had taken place and who was responsible.

‘But as a mark of respect, we felt we should make a contribution. The same amount that Ferrer was demanding — forty thousand — seemed right.’

That got Malastra’s attention. ‘That’s quite a sum Ferrer was after?’

‘Yeah, it was.’

Silence. Nel-M obviously wasn’t going to offer to explain, and Malastra wasn’t going to be clumsy enough to ask.

‘Thank you kindly for the offer — and I accept. It’ll help fill the hole in what Ferrer was pulling in.’ In reality, there’d be no hole; Ferrer had been replaced within two days. And Malastra was glad of the call: it got rid of the nagging worry that it might have been a rival and a turf war was looming. ‘Give my regards to your fine Mr Roche.’

Two more days on and off at the computer and Malastra had put all the pieces together. Originally set up to skim money away from the IRS, involving exchanging cash for dummy receipts between the bar and chip-cashing booth, it looked like the Bay Tree’s manager, George Jouliern, had been taking some off the top for himself.

Malastra picked up the phone and summoned one of his Capos, Tommy ‘Bye-bye’ Angellini.

Bye-bye eased his large frame into the proffered chair and waited patiently as Malastra went through his final deliberations on the computer.

Pushing fifty, Bye-bye’s hair was dyed jet black; partly to hide the grey, but mostly in homage to his two idols, Elvis and Johnny Cash. With his bulk, he looked more like Elvis in his final hamburger days.

Malastra looked up finally from his computer screen.

‘George Jouliern. And soon.’

That was all that was said between the two men. Bye-bye nodded and left.

‘I’m sorry if I startled you.’

‘No, that’s okay,’ Jac said. The girl from next door! He felt his face still flushed from the adrenalin rush, or maybe it was her proximity. Viewed from a corridor’s length away, she was a beauty, but up close she took his breath away. Her brown eyes seemed to sparkle and tease at the same time, and her body heat and perfume wrapped around him like a soft velvet shroud. His mouth was suddenly dry. ‘I… I was just reaching for the light switch on the way to my apartment.’ Jac pointed towards his door.

‘Oh, right. You live there. We’re neighbours and didn’t even know it.’ She smiled broadly and reached out a delicate hand. ‘Alaysha Reyner. Pleased to meet you.’

Jac took the proffered hand and shook it lightly. ‘Jac McElroy. Jack with no “k”. Pleased to meet you too.’

They stood silently, awkwardly for a second, not sure who might speak next, if there was anything else to say — then she reached down to the bag she’d left on the floor as she’d pushed the light switch. But as she straightened, she looked at Jac again, as if as an afterthought.

‘By the way — was that you I saw coming along the corridor the other day?’ she asked. ‘Then suddenly disappeared from view.’

‘Yes, I….’ Jac was distracted as a door opened on the other side of the corridor, and Alaysha turned too: Mrs Orwin, pushing eighty and half-toothless, who made it her business to check any noise close by her door and strike up a conversation with the passer-by if she saw fit, appraised them briefly, forced a closed-mouth grimace so that she didn’t frighten them too much, then as quickly closed the door back the few inches she’d opened it. The flushing in Jac’s face had subsided slightly with the pause. ‘I… I got a call on my cell-phone and had to head back to the apartment.’