Jack Higgins: In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

The man who ran the “Lights of Lisbon” was named Coimbra, a thin, cadaverous Portuguese with one interest in life – money. He had a hand in most things as far as I could judge and didn’t have a scruple in the world. Whatever you wanted, Coimbra could get it for you at a price. We boasted the finest selection of girls on the coast.

I noticed Burke the moment he came in, although his enormous physique would have made him stand out anywhere. I think that was the thing which struck one most about him – the air of sheer physical competence and controlled power that made men move out of his way, even in a place like that.

He was dressed for the bush in felt hat, shooting jacket, khaki pants and sand boots. One of the girls made a pass at him, a quadroon with skin like honey and the kind of body that would have had a bishop on his knees. Burke looked through her, not over her, as if she simply didn’t exist, and ordered a drink.

The girl was called Lola and as we’d been more than good friends I felt like telling him he was missing out on a damn good thing, but maybe that was just the whisky talking. In those days I wasn’t too used to it and it was dangerously cheap. When I looked up, he was standing watching, a glass of beer in one hand.

“You want to lay off that stuff,” he said as I poured another. “It won’t do you any good, not in this climate.”

“My funeral.”

I suppose that was the right kind of reply for the tough, footloose adventurer I fondly imagined myself to be at that time and I toasted him. He challenged me calmly, his face quite expressionless, and when I raised the glass to my lips it took a real physical effort. The whisky tasted foul. I gagged and put the glass down hurriedly, a hand to my mouth.

His expression didn’t change. “The barman tells me you’re English.”

Which was what I thought he was at the time, for his Irish upbringing was indicated more by tricks of speech and phrasing than accent.

I shook my head. “American.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

“I spent what they term the formative years in Europe.”

He nodded. “I don’t suppose you can play ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’?”

“As ever was,” I said, and moved into a reasonably straight rendering of the beautiful old Irish folk song.

It lacked John McCormack, but wasn’t bad though I do say it myself. He nodded soberly when I finished. “You’re good – too good for this place.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Is it all right if I smoke?”

“I’ll tell the barman to send you a beer,” he replied gravely.

He returned to the bar and a moment later one of Coimbra ’s flunkeys tapped him on the shoulder. There was a short conversation and they went upstairs together.

Lola came across, yawning hugely. “You’re losing your touch,” I told her.

“The Englishman?” She shrugged. “I’ve met his kind before. Half a man. Big in everything except what counts.”

She moved on and I sat there thinking about what she had said, working my way through a slow blues. At that time I was inclined to think she was talking into the wind, probably out of a kind of professional pique at being snubbed. A man didn’t have to be the other thing just because he wasn’t particularly attracted to women, although I’ve never seen any virtue in not indulging at every opportunity in what is one of life’s greatest pleasures as far as I’m concerned. The Sicilian half of me discovered women early.

I came to the end of the number I was playing and lit a cigarette. For some reason there was one of those sudden lulls that you sometimes get with a crowd anywhere. Everyone seemed to stop talking and the whole thing became curiously dreamlike. It was as if I was outside looking into the packed room and things moved in a kind of slow motion.

What was I doing here on the rim of the dark continent, Africa all around me? Faces everywhere, looming through the smoke, black, white, brown and subtle variations in between, riff-raff, not even a common humanity holding us together, all running from something.

Suddenly I’d had enough. In a way, I’d taken a look, not so much at myself as I was then, but at what I would soon become and I didn’t like what I’d seen. I was hot and sticky, sweat trickling from my armpits, and I decided to change my shirt. I realise now, of course, that I was only looking for some excuse to go upstairs.

My room was on the third floor, Coimbra ’s apartment on the second, the girls being down below. As a rule it was quiet up there because that was the way Coimbra liked it, but now, as I paused at the end of the passage, I was aware again of that same strange stillness I had experienced earlier.

The voices, when I heard them, seemed far away and I walked on, aware that someone was speaking angrily. The first door opened into a kind of anteroom. I went in cautiously and moved through darkness to where a thousand fingers of light pierced a lattice screen.

Coimbra was seated at his desk, one of his heavies, Gilberto, at his back holding a gun. Herrara, the man who had brought Burke up from the café, leaned against the door, arms folded.

Burke was standing a couple of yards away from the desk, legs slightly apart, hands in the pockets of his bush jacket. I could see him in profile and his face might have been carved from stone.

“You don’t seem to understand,” Coimbra was saying. “No one was interested in your proposition, it’s as simple as that.”

“And my five thousand dollars?”

Coimbra looked as if he was fast losing his patience. “I have been put to considerable expense in this matter – considerable expense.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Now you are being sensible, major. In business these things happen. One must be prepared to take risks for quick returns. And now you must excuse me. My men will escort you. This is a rough district. It would desolate me if anything were to happen to you.”

“I’m sure it would,” Burke said dryly.

Gilberto smiled for the first time and hefted the Luger in his hand and Burke took off his bush hat, wiping his face with the back of his right hand, looking suddenly beaten.

But I could see what they could not. Inside the crown of his hat an old short-barrelled Banker’s special was held in place by a spring clip. He shot Gilberto from cover, so to speak, slamming him back against the wall, turned and covered Herrara who was starting to draw.

“I don’t think so,” Burke said, and I was aware of the power in the man, the vital force.

He made Herrara face the wall and searched him quickly. And Coimbra, man of surprises to the end, opened a silver cigar box and produced a small automatic.

I had a friend once who took up golf and was a scratch man within three months. He had a natural flair for the game just as some people have language kinks and others can rival computers in mental calculation.

On one memorable Sunday afternoon during my first month at Harvard, another student took me to a local pistol club. I’d never fired a gun in my life, yet when he put a Colt Woodsman in my hand and told me what to do, I experienced a new feeling. The gun became a part of me and the things I did with it in one short hour had astonished everyone there.

So I was a natural shot with something of a genius for handguns, but I had never aimed at a human being. What happened next seemed so natural that, in retrospect, it was frightening. I flung open the door, dropped to one knee and grabbed for Gilberto’s Luger where it lay on the floor. In the same moment, I shot Coimbra through the hand.

Burke swung, crouched for action, a tiger ready to spring, his own gun in one hand, Herrara’s in the other. Although I didn’t realise it then, it said a lot for his control that he didn’t shoot me as a reflex action.