Philip Kerr - The Five Year Plan (1998)

'Nice,' said Al. 'Real classy.'

'Glad you like it,' said Nudelli. 'Cost me a fuckin' fortune. And then some. The refinements I had done were almost as much as the original bronze.'

Al frowned and then looked a little more closely at Marilyn. The halterneck dress, the big breasts, the same look of ecstatic delight on her dippy blonde face. She looked exactly the way he remembered her from the movie. Right down to the red polish on her toenails. Finally, admitting defeat, he said, 'OK, I give up. I can't see no difference. Exactly what were these refinements you had done?'

Nudelli grinned. 'Take a look under her dress,' he suggested.

'You're kidding.' But Al bent down, peeked between Marilyn's legs, and let out a loud guffaw. The white panties she had been wearing in the movie were gone. And what was there instead looked as realistic as if she'd been a table dancer flashing her pussy in your face in return for a bill underneath her garter. Right down to the gash in the pubic hair.

Still laughing Al said, 'Now that's what I call a conversation piece.'

'I thought so.'

'She's beautiful, Tony, just beautiful.'

'I'm thinkin' of having her up on some kind of table. It can't be this one, she's too heavy for glass. But I want to be able to look at that trim now and then, whenever the fancy takes me.' He lit a cigar and puffed it, happily watching Al as he squatted down to take another, closer look.

'Can I touch her pussy?'

'Be my guest.'

Al reached up and pressed the palm of his hand over Marilyn's private parts, laughing like a kid. He said, 'I never thought I'd get to give Marilyn Monroe some index finger.'

'You and Bobby Kennedy.'

'Not forgetting Jack.' He sang, ' "Happy birthday, Mister President."'

'She looks like she's enjoying it, Al.'

'I've always known how to please a woman, y'know? It's all in the wrist action. Man, this feels good.'

'Who says modern art don't mean nuthin'?'

'Not me. You won't hear me complaining.'

For Tony's benefit, Al sniffed his forefinger experimentally, each nostril vacuuming along its hairy knuckled length as if it had been the choicest cigar from Tony's rosewood humidor. He said, 'Too bad you couldn't get it made scratch 'n' sniff.'

'I'm workin' on it.' Nudelli waved his Cohiba at the seat in front of him. 'Sit down, Al. We've got some business to discuss.'

'I figured.'

'This longitude and latitude that Delano gave you. I had the guys on my boat look it up on their charts. Seems like it's a spot north-west of the Azores along the Mid-Atlantic Shelf. Anyway I fixed everything. Just like Delano wanted. A freighter out of Naples is gonna meet you at this nautical position. She's the Ercolano. Carrying break bulk cargo. Loose items like spools of wire, lumber, steel beams, shit that's too large to be containerized. But mostly Italian marble for the luxury bathrooms and gourmet kitchens of America. I'll come back to that in a minute. The Ercolano's agent in Naples is a company called Agrigento. I've done business with them before and they're 100 percent reliable for our purposes. The captain's been told to expect to find a vessel in distress at that position and to pick up a passenger and cargo. He's going to hide the money in a marble sarcophagus that's on its way to some rich dead guy in Savannah.'

Al nodded. 'Got it.'

'Also, you'll note I said "passenger". Not plural, but singular. Meaning your individual ass, Al.' Tony puffed the cigar and looked momentarily uncertain of something. 'It's up to you how you do it pal, but I don't want Delano comin' back here to Miami with the money. The long and the short and the in-between of it is that I want him dead. I figure you'll need him alive only as long as it takes for you to make the rendezvous with the Ercolano. If I was you I'd let him have it before you get on the Ercolano and then sink the yacht, like he planned. Only with his dead son-of-abitch body still on board.'

Tony paused and studied Al's big open face for a moment, aware that Al had got to know Delano reasonably well on the voyage from Costa Rica. He studied the redhot gray end of the cigar for a moment, feeling the heat on his cheek, and said, 'You gotta problem with any of that?'

Al shook his head. 'No problem at all. Delano's got a smart mouth. On the way back from CR he was breakin' my balls about this n'that. There were a couple of times when I felt like popping him right then and there. You know what I told him? I told him I was surprised someone didn't grease him while he was still in Homestead.' Al

shook his head bitterly. 'S'gonna get worse too, I'm sure of it.'

'What do you mean?'

'Him fuckin' with me. Like for instance, this air traffic controllers' strike?'

Tony said, 'Don't remind me. I got to take the train to New York because of those fuckers. Country's going to shit.'

'Unfortunately there's no train to Europe. It seems as if a lot of boat owners who want to get over the Atlantic this spring have decided to beat the strike and travel with their boats.'

'So?'

'So Delano made the booking with SYT describing himself as the owner and me as the crew. He's gonna be giving me orders all the time. Breakin' my balls, like I'm the hired help.'

Tony tried not to laugh. He said, 'Just remember something, Al. With the smart mouth comes an even smarter brain. Don't forget, he's a Jew, and Jews are clever. Don't make the same mistake as Willy One Eye. Don't underestimate that kike.'

Al nodded impatiently. 'Yeah, yeah.'

'And don't let yourself get needled. There may be a reason behind it. So be cool and turn the other cheek. Two things you gotta bear in mind if he starts riding you, Al. One, when this is all over you get to waste his smart ass; and two, you get to keep his share of the money. That should make your cross easier to bear. Huh? What do you say to that?'

Al said, 'Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Tony.'

'One more thing. Watch out that it's not you who gets double-crossed. The Atlantic is a big place, Al. And recent history teaches us that a lot can go wrong in an ocean.'

'You're telling me,' said Al. 'That kid I told you--'

'If it does...' Nudelli puffed out a cloud of smoke and watched it hang in the air between them, as if considering the size of the threat he wished to convey to the other man. The smoke slowly drifted up Marilyn's white bronze skirt adding an infernal touch to her famous pose. He'd actually met Marilyn once, not long before she died, when she was hanging around with Sam Giancana. A nice girl. A shame what had happened to her. Only it hadn't been Sam who'd helped hasten her death.

He said, 'If it does go wrong, you can depend on this. That I can be as cruel as any of them fuckin' Kennedys. Joe included.'

They were never a close family. The way Dave looked at it, they were never a family at all.

It was the usual stuff. A father who drank. That was the Russian in him. A mother who lit out. That was the Irish in her. And his sister, with an unwanted pregnancy and a boyfriend who didn't marry her. Well, that was hardly Nick's fault. Nick Rosen would probably have married Lisa if someone hadn't cut his throat first.

By the time Dave was twenty he'd more or less given up on them all. With the occasional exception of Lisa. Not that he'd really been much help there either. Just making it through life on his own had seemed challenge enough without having to shoulder the badly packed luggage of their problems as well. But at least he'd tried to help her. Once. Maybe now, after five years, it was time to try again. Maybe. That was how he found himself driving over to her dismally suburban two-bedroom bungalow off Hallandale Beach Boulevard a couple of weeks after he got back from CR.

Dave got out of the Miata carrying his Nike sports bag and walked up the path. He knocked on the warped wooden door and a big dog started to bark inside the house. He waited. It wasn't yet midday. A stupid time to go visiting. She might have been out working except that the drapes were pulled and there was an old and battered red Mustang parked on the drive. A car that had once been his. How could she have let it get that badly rusted?