11 Harrowhouse (45 page)
Authors: Gerald A. Browne
By then Maren and Chesser were just across the square from the hotel, entering the Casino.
In the
salle privée
Maren was ambivalent about whether to play roulette or chemin.
“Try both,” suggested Chesser.
She shook her head and settled on roulette. She bypassed several active tablets for the one deepest in the room, as if that choice was in some superstitious way significant. Chesser bought her chipsâfifty thousand francs' worth. The amount they'd predetermined as her limit. She stacked them neatly according to denomination on the baize surface before her, but she didn't begin play immediately, waited to observe the fall of the ball for a while.
Her play was methodical, although it appeared erratic. Frequently she didn't participate in two or three consecutive turns and she always glanced left and right before selecting a number. She won her initial bet and continued to win more often than not.
Chesser stood behind her chair. He watched the green scattered with the wafers of hope, nearly every number covered despite the fact that only one could win. There was the frictional whine of the wheel and, finally, the plick-plick-plock of the ball skipping and falling. The croupier's rake was mercilessly precise, gathering for the house. Fingers, exhibiting the flashes of carats, placed mindless convictions here and there in large amounts. There was no laughter, the pleasure coming from the punishing intensity.
It occurred to Chesser that actually the players were wagering against one another, and the true stakes were preferential treatment by the god of chance.
He attended Maren, touched her shoulder encouragingly, took her hand when she offered it, lighted cigarettes for her and ordered champagne. From his vantage he could see down the front of her dress, her perfectly firm, bare breasts with their nipples looking aroused, as always.
He soon realized that the man beside him, a chubby Arab standing to play, was also enjoying that view.
Chesser glanced disapprovingly at him.
The Arab disregarded it.
Chesser sidled part way around Maren's chair, to obstruct the Arab's view.
But the Arab was a player, entitled to place his wagers. He nudged through and continued to steal from Maren's exposure. However, distracted as he was, the Arab gambled badly. And because he preferred not to relinquish his visual advantage, he continued to purchase more and more chips. Until he'd lost well over a hundred fifty thousand francs. Perhaps, according to his standards, it was worth it.
Chesser considered it nearly a fair price.
Maren was having a fortunate night. By early morning she was ahead a hundred seventy-five thousand francs. Chesser suggested she stop.
“One more play,” she said.
Only two other players remained at the table, both heavy losers trying to recoup. Maren summoned the head croupier and spoke privately with the man, who nodded politely to her and to the croupier serving her table.
She resumed. On the very next turn she looked right and left, paused unsurely, looked left and right again, shrugged, and pushed all her chips out into play.
“Number 11,” she declared.
Chesser winced, but was silently appreciative.
After about fifty revolutions, centrifugal force gave way to gravity and the ball fell into number 13.
“Right next door,” said Maren, blase. She turned to Chesser, who was now seated beside her. She asked him to purchase more chips.
“No more,” he told her.
He thought she would protest, but instead she admired him with her eyes and rewarded him with a kiss.
They left the Casino.
Maren was exhilarated, not sleepy. She didn't want to go back to the hotel yet. They'd drive somewhere. The Upper Corniche? No. She wanted to go the harbor.
Chesser steered them through the one-ways of the town and down to the waterfront, out around where private boats and yachts were moored. Everyone else was sleeping. The only motion was the easy tossing of the vessels. He stopped the car and they got out to walk with arms around.
“Know why I was winning so much tonight?” she asked.
“The Little Black Virgin.”
“Hell no. But I did have some help. Billie Three Rocks and my Chinaman were telling me which numbers to play. I relied completely on them.”
“They certainly finished strong.”
“They just couldn't make up their minds that last time,” she explained.
“Oh, that was it,” said Chesser, going along.
“Billie advised me to play number 11, but my Chinaman told me not to.”
“You should have listened to the Chinaman.”
“Obviously.”
“If there was such a difference of opinion, why didn't you just skip that turn, instead of plunging as you did?”
“I had to play.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to find out which of them was right.”
Chesser had to laugh. He imagined how many of their future decisions might be influenced by her two invisible and, evidently, not infallible mentors.
They walked out on the breakwater. Huge slabs of concrete placed one after another, slanted a few degrees to favor east and west alternately. This arrangement made the breakwater an attractive sunning place, and on any bright day the smooth slabs would be spread with nearly nude figures that shifted with the sun from the easterly slabs in the morning to the westerly ones in the afternoon.
Maren and Chesser strolled all the way out to the breakwater's tip. Dawn was just starting on the horizon. The sea was taking it calmly, gently lapping where it touched, but farther out it was incongruously vulnerable to a mere skim of wind.
“Back between,” remarked Maren, gazing thoughtfully seaward.
“Hmmm?”
“That's where I'd like to go. Back between the sky and the sea. Not to live there, but for a while, at least, just to see how I see it now.”
“Where's that?” asked Chesser, believing he knew.
She told him.
She seldom mentioned the place. From what little she'd ever said, Chesser had picture it intolerably bleak and desolate. However, now she glorified it, reminisced brightly about how she used to look at the reflections on the placid surface of the fjord and pretend everything was inverted: the mountains sitting on duplicate mountains, birds on birds, her on her. Two of everything, so she could imagine not knowing which was real.
Describing it, her words came out coated with tender recall, as though they were slightly too large for her to express and her eyes grew moist. She asked him with her eyes.
“We'll go,” he promised.
“Soon?”
“Soon,” he told her.
She remained close to him for a long moment, then separated abruptly. She removed her shoes. Before he realized what she was doing, she'd slipped her dress off and down and had stepped away from the softly bunched circle of it. All she had on then were white bikini panties.
“A swim will relax me,” she said.
“It'll be cold.”
“All the more relaxing.”
She went to the edge, looked down to the water, and hesitated. Then, making up her mind, she inserted her thumbs inside the elastic top of her panties and stripped them down, inside out. She kicked them in Chesser's direction.
The light was kind. Everything was gaining color nowâthe hills of the town, the water, her hair.
She was on the edge, poised to dive.
Chesser kept his distance, to enjoy the exquisite full length sight of her. He was suddenly very aroused, couldn't help calling her name.
She turned.
He went to her with arms extended, to take her in.
They held against one another, and, realizing his arousal, she pressured and moved to increase it.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know,” she said, “I
know.”
At that moment, the steel jacketed bullet entered her back. It came from a high-velocity rifle triggered by the finger of a black assassin, one of Weaver's brothers obeying. Making sure at any price that no one would ever connect Weaver with the twenty million carat theft.
The bullet went through her, all the way through, and into him, carrying some of her flesh into his.
Almost simultaneously, another bullet from another assassin's rifle entered Chesser's back and passed entirely through him, tore through, carrying some of his flesh into hers.
Her head fell back and her Viking hair streamed down.
“Jag är rädd,”
she murmured.
I am afraid
.
He wanted to tell her not to be, and he felt that he could tell her.
But he didn't have to.
They were already dead.
About the Author
Gerald A. Browne is the
New York Times
âbestselling author of ten novels including
11 Harrowhouse, 19 Purchase Street
, and
Stone 588
. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages, and several have been made into films. He attended the University of Mexico, Columbia University, and the Sorbonne, and has worked as a fashion photographer, an advertising executive, and a screenwriter. He lives in Southern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Lyrics by Dory Previn copyright © 1970 by Mediarts Music, Inc. and Bouquet Music
Copyright © 1986 by Pulse Productions, Inc.
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-3711-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
EBOOKS BY GERALD A. BROWNE
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
