INFAMOUS TRADE by Andrej Koymasky (C) 1998 - 2002 written the 20th of July, 1995 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Jer
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"INFAMOUS TRADE" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
SIXTH
While Rowland was headed towards Shepherd Market Center, his lover was lying on a crumpled bed in a room in Soho. He was busy sucking Rowena Robinson's tits. Roro, a lean black woman with long legs and dark eyes sensual shining. Soft Afro-American music with hints of rap played from a tape recorder on the table by the bed.
In the next room a fully aroused Scottish man in his late fifties, reddish hair, was observing, the scene through the partially closed door. His name was Bernard Muir and he was wearing a uniform of the London Police.
Stopping for only for a moment, Thomas took the Porto bottle from the night stand and took a long sip. Smiling at the young woman, he plunged to lick her legs. Panting with pleasure the girl pushed his head to her groin. While the man was busying himself licking her clit, she arched her body back to the contact and moaned, waving her slender pelvis.
"How hard you are, Thomas! I want you!"
"Sure... you are always splendid, Roro..."
"I want to be on top."
They exchanged places and she started to ride him with a frantic rhythm.
"Pinch my tits." She begged and Thomas obeyed. She moaned: "It's great... oh, it's really great!"
The girl cummed first, almost howling, and was about to push her nails into his chest, but he quickly grabbed her hands, continuing to pump inside her: "Be careful, or he will notice..."
Rowena, her breath broken, quickly apologized and lowered to kiss him: "Forgive me, love, I forgot. Forgive me..."
He unloaded, trembling like a leaf. Then they lay still. Rowena on top of Thomas, her head leaning on his chest, listening to his heart beat.
"Five minutes more, Love, and it will be over..."
Five minutes. A pity it was not a basketball game; but a game much bigger and a totally different kind. Five minutes to win or to lose. Thomas heart beat wildly -- it was too late to withdraw. The girl left the bed and went to turn the tape. A moment later the room door opened and Bernard Muir entered, a truncheon in his hand.
He approached the bed and addressed Thomas, patting the truncheon on his open palm and said: "Well well well, what do we have here? I would say a rather indecent scene. I would have to arrest you for such an offense. But I am an obliging guy. In fact I think I will shut one eye, for this time. Let's make a pact -- if you give me some fun, I'll forgot what I just saw. Is that all right?"
Thomas, silent, closed his eyes and didn't answer. Muir hit his palm with more strength and hissed: "I asked you -- is it all right?"
"Please, mister policeman... I'll do everything you want, but don't arrest us. Please. Don't arrest us..."
Muir put the truncheon on the side table, rapidly pulled off his blue trousers and white boxers letting them slip on the floor: "So, young man, you know what you deserve, don't you?"
"Yes, sir, punish me... Punish me as you please, but don't arrest us, I beg you!" Thomas said with a bothered voice.
"Very good, if this is what you want..."
Rummaging in the pocket of his jacket, Muir took a condom, tore open the wrapper and slipped its top between his lips. Wearing just the top of his uniform, Muir climbed into the bed and took Thomas' member in his hand. Rapidly he rolled the condom with his tongue onto the young man's member and worked on it until it became again fully hard. When he felt it was again ready, Muir went astride him and rode him with less impetuosity than Rowena, but not with less pleasure.
"Push up, stallion, if you want me to forgive you. Push harder, let's make it a real rodeo!" Muir said full of lust, squeezing Thomas nipples and continuing to spring up and down on the strong stake that was filling his back channel.
When all was over, Thomas went to the bathroom, leaving the girl and Muir alone. The girl sat on the bed next to the man, still excited, who looked at her. In her eyes, reflected the sparkling of a red candle still burning on the side table.
"Did you have your fun, Bernie?"
"Yes, very much. Absolutely satisfied. A gorgeous male, virile. I dreamed for ages being fucked by a straight man like him."
"It wasn't easy to convince him, you know? It's the first time he does that with a man..." she shrewdly lied.
Picking up his trousers from the floor, Muir pulled out a small notebook with a khaki cover from the back pocket. He smiled to Rowena gently mocking her, waving the note book in front of her nose. Her heart beating wildly, the girl threw him a glance full of hate, resisting the impulse to tear it away from his hand. She became aware she held her breath only after he tore from it three pages and handed them to her. Three small pages from a cheap note book. Muir's payment for the fuck he just had with Thomas. Three small pages that contained information worth millions and millions.
The Scottish man looked at his watch: "I really have to run now. If I arrived late, I'll really have a hard time. And it's not easy to commute in this bad weather."
"We will send you your part to the Liechtenstein bank you told us."
"Yes. It would not be normal for me to have such a sum in my bank in England. They would at once question me. There, the banks are discreet, more than the damned Swiss, and anyway they will never know that the account is mine."
Suddenly Muir seemed to become harder, almost frowning: "Eddie gave me a chance to have my revenge and to make a gain at the same time. That fucking bastard of a boss says I am too old and that according to custom in these times it is a job for younger men. That bastard slut of an Indian! So he sacks me, and even without a retirement allowance. He gave me a plate and a check for a thousand pounds. After twelve years of service! A plate, you see? I'll push it all inside his ass hole, along with its case. His fucking plate! That bastard pig, Ravi Sunny! Well, he was about to sack me, but I'll take away from him something more than just his shitty plate."
Rowena looked at Muir entering the nearby room, take a small suitcase put a carefully folded uniform and the truncheon inside. Then she watched him dress in a gray suit, a dark coat and hat. He took his umbrella and looked around.
"I think I took everything. I have no time to wash myself, I'm sorry. My greetings to Mister Eddie Walkerdine. The notes that I just gave you will solve all his problems. If he needed something else, he knows how to contact me."
"Thank you again, Bernie. Your money will be deposed as promise, after the robbery."
"I had a wonderful evening. Good night, Thomas!" he shouted towards the bathroom.
From there came the annoyed voice of the young man: "Fuck yourself, piece of Shit!"
"Your man has a really fascinating way to express himself, I must say. I will miss him... and his rod." Muir said sarcastically. Smiling and waving good bye, he left.
Thomas, who had just finished his shower, come out of the bathroom, in a really black mood.
Rowena stood up and caressed his muscled body: "Come on, don't put on such a face! He's not the first man you fucked, is he?"
"Good Lord, but such a perverted old man... Dressing as a policeman, then! Besides the fact that Rowland has class, and your brother... with him is like with you, you know it. You know that I am in love with both of you, don't you?"
"Then, just think you did it for our Andreas..." she sweetly said.
Eddie Walkerdine was a forty-five year old Englishman, small, dark wavy hair that was thinning, and a shrewd smile. He wore a tuxedo with a white carnation in the lapel, Gucci moccasins, and a red-gold ring with a big sapphire mounted on it. Between his teeth he had a small black, unlit cigar. He, Rowena and Thomas were sitting on the bed, about an hour after Muir left. They were silent, while Walkerdine was carefully examining the three small pages filled with information gathered by Muir.
Two months earlier, Eddie started to put in action a plan to gather the necessary money for his major move to Costa del Sol, to Marbella. His plan, if successful, would give him the needed money to meet all the expenses he was forced to sustain -- the alimony for his three ex wives and his five children, an annual income for a former lover and her son, and taking care of his old ill mother. There would remain enough to buy a restaurant on Marbella's coast, a small hotel near the casino of Puerto Bancos and a building of new apartments right at the limits of the residential quarter. This was the goal he had since a boy and now it was within his reach.
For the moment, he only knew that all these estates were for sale, and he was very uneasy. He was longing to buy them. He even put down a deposit, so certain he was going to have all the money before the end of December. He would get the entire amount with a robbery at the deposit of Shepherd Market. He thought he could get about fifty million pounds, possibly more, perhaps a little less, anyway more than enough. Cunning and full of energy, Walkerdine cautiously planned his moves, determined if it was the case, and priding himself to be able to always understand when it was necessary to abandon a lost cause. Once he was a bus driver. He never met his father. He made himself successful in the difficult environment of London's West End, skillfully playing on the weakness of those who could back his ambitions. In spite of his ape like appearance, women found him fascinating, strong and talented with a remarkable erotic charge.
Walkerdine was the manager of the Riviera, a disco in Leicester Square frequented by rich black men, which he transformed into one of the most fashionable clubs in London. Not often seen in the luxury clubs where often non-whites were send away with the pretext that the entrance was reserved for members only. The wealthy black men avoided the clubs managed by lower ranking colored people, places that often were unsafe if not down right dangerous.
At the Riviera white men could enter, but only if guests of a black customer, so that most of the clients were the wealthy black men, among them Caribbean or African millionaires. In the club's programs were frequent visits of famous colored movies or sport stars from America. Walkerdine met Thomas and Rowena when they went to his disco with some black friends, professional basketball players in the States or in Europe.
In September, Walkerdine married for the fourth time. His wife, who hated England where she constantly suffered from the cold, was Julia Blanchero, a twenty five year old model from Marbella, where she wanted to return. She said that there she would able to get more sun in one day than in London in a month. Eddie met the plump Julia during his vacation in Marbella, where he was guest of a sheik, one of the main weapons traffickers and owner of the biggest yacht moored in the port. Julia also was a guest of the sheik, or to better say of his bed. They fell in love, married, and went back to London. But now both were eager to return to Spain.
It was not only Julia that could not stand the English climate. Eddie's asthma was worsening because of the humid climate. That Summer, the doctor warned him that all the inhalators, pills and injections he was using could no longer do any good for his breathing problems. If he didn't find a way to move to a place with a warmer and dryer climate, he could even expect, sooner or later, a deadly stroke of asthma.
Moreover, there were the effects of working too many years in discos, bar, clubs and restaurants. He was fed up with eighteen hour a day shifts, of owners, of protection money, of police bribes, of the dawn stabbing among drunk customers. Not to mention the drug addicts taking an overdose in the women bathrooms, of the rock-stars and their grim gorillas, of the clerks coming to drink and not having money to pay, of the bartenders sexually harassing the waitresses, or of the customers groping the waitresses or the waiters. But what annoyed him the most, was working for somebody else.
For years he spent his vacations in Marbella where his wit and arrogance made him popular among the English expatriates, the rich Arabs, and the movies stars who lived in exile to avoid taxation. He pleased himself toasting with champagne the real rich people, while tanning on their yachts moored in port. What he desired more was to live there with Julia, forever.
Two months earlier, one Thursday evening, Eddie Walkerdine's future, in the shape of Bernard Muir, entered his club. That Thursday, at the Riviera, was the evening dedicated to gay people. Nothing too extravagant, just some dancing, some chat, and the possibility, for gay people, to relax without incurring the dirty looks of intolerant people. Walkerdine had this idea, a way to also earn money on the evening of the week that usually the club was the most empty. Eddie liked gay people, and soon Thursdays the club filled as much, and even more, than on the other days. He didn't care too much if two customers closed themselves in the same toilet, and he smiled indulgent and obligingly to the couples kissing in the more shadowed corners of the club.
Bernie Muir soon became one of the organizers of the gay evenings. Walkerdine didn't pay much attention to him, judging him a loser who always choose the wrong man. Muir also drank a little too much. He was half drunk when he told Walkerdine that they were about to sack him. Muir said that he had to find a way to take revenge on them for being treated so badly, and Walkerdine figured his words were nothing more than a drunkard talking.
"Rob them. Let's make a partnership and empty their safes to the last penny." Walkerdine told him just as a joke.
"A very good idea." Muir answered, then continued explaining him how it could be done.
After spending a full night consider their conversation, Walkerdine called him the next day. Both started to work that same night, talking for six hours in a row. This time it was anything but a joke.
Walkerdine, sitting on Rowena's bed, crushed his little cigar in the ashtray on the crumpled pillow, and stood up. Scratching his chin, he smiled to Thomas: "You don't have a nice face, handsome!"
"I just felt mad when Muir did his filthy things to me, but now it's over. He is just a fucking bastard, wearing a policeman's uniform! If you want my opinion, that man is completely out of his mind. Was it really needed?"
"That was the pact -- for this information, two hundred pounds and your fine body at his service for a fuck. Sex and money, the two things that made the world spin. Say what you want, but that motherfucker kept his promise -- everything is here, in black and white. All the positions of close circuit cameras, the alarms set inside and outside the building, the coded locks, the number of guards in service after midnight and their positions... everything. The most important thing is that the telephone lines are connected with the alarms. If you one cut off, you cut off all of them. It is no longer possible to call, either inside or outside. No distraction, no danger."
"You said that cutting the telephone line, it will no longer be possible call from either the inside or the outside. Good. Now just think that while we are quietly emptying the safes, somebody calls the deposit and is not able to contact it. I think this could become a problem..."
We are not in America. We English people are much more relaxed in some situations, and safety is one of these. We don't have the crime level you have, nor your paranoia. All around the depository, all night long there is practically no signs of life, and clients very seldom go there after ten p.m. And after midnight, there could be one, two calls a week. If they cannot get the line, they will just go to sleep thinking that there is a breakdown on the line and they will just go to sleep. Nothing more, don't worry."
"I wouldn't like to find myself in the middle of a shooting."
"Don't worry. The guards inside the deposit don't carry weapons. Theoretically the alarm would have to ring before the company who is in charge of safety sends armed guards. But once we cut the lines, there will be no alarm. And the safety company is on the other side of London, so anyway it would take them both a little time to reach the depository. The center has complex locks, big strong gates, and an alarm system. A robbery or even an attempt has never happened in all of its history. They feel safe, and this will beat them. It is just a beautiful juicy peach ready to be picked and eaten, and I tell you that it is us who will do it. You can't step back now, handsome, at this point..." Walkerdine concluded in a mild voice.
Thomas almost jumped up from the bed, his face red and his temples pulsating: "I didn't say that and won't accept any fucking shit! What are you fucking saying now, that you cannot count on me any more? I gave my word, didn't I?"
Eddie's hands rose like to stop him: "Sorry, boy, I didn't want to offend you! It is just that now we are into it completely... as the Bishop said to the actress. You haven't yet meet the other two who will work with us, they are not people who accept hesitation. They come from the West End, where crime is not just one of the several ways to earn a living, but the only one. If you show you are hesitant, scared, they..."
"You are trying to do the robbery without me? Do you want to keep everything that is in those damned safes? Say it!"
"You know very well that I could not take the loot out of the country. That's why I asked you to enter into this business. And there have to be four of us, and if you don't want to come, I have to look for another man. I don't want too many people in this business, to many people with whom to share the loot."
"OK. No more discussion then. I came to do the robbery and take the loot out of England to recycle it in New York. And you will give me one quarter of all we get, plus all that is in my Mister Preston's safety box, as agreed. That bastard niggard, at least I can pay myself back for all these months."
"We should not get nervous, everything is proceeding finely, as we agreed. If I offended you, I apologize, so now calm down." Eddie said making an effort to smile.
Rowena went next to Thomas and took his hand between hers, and told Walkerdine: "You can count on Thomas, he has too many, very good, reasons to do his part, believe me."
Her interventions allowed. Walkerdine started to calm down. Quarreling with Thomas was a waste of time -- why did he say to that idiot that the only way to harm his protector was by him taking away his safety box? Well, anyway... now he promised him that, and so...
Taking his coat and hat from a chair, he said: "My duty is calling me. You two love birds, will you come to the club, this evening?"
"No we have a couple of things to do. Possibly tomorrow." Thomas said shaking his head.
Eddie nodded: "Then, see you tomorrow. Oh, when you come to our club, you have to try our new cocktail. They say it is aphrodisiac. Don't laugh, Rowena -- rum, grenadine, vodka, soda, a pinch of mango, fresh lime and cream. Absolutely sensational. Granted that it makes you horny, believe me."
After Walkerdine left, Rowena was the first to talk: "Eddie is a smart man. If he can cheat on you, he'll do it. Eddie works only for himself, don't forget it."
"I believe you..." Thomas answered.
He glanced at Rowena's face and saw the love expression that sustained him in these last months. A love that at times made him lose any self-control and that made him ready to do anything she asked him. Only one other person in the world had the same effect on him -- her brother Andres.
With a hesitant voice, he said: "I've passed bad moments for this business, and you know it. You know Eddie as I do -- in your opinion, do I have to go ahead or to leave it all?" She didn't answer. "He is a champion in manipulating people, Eddie. You and Andres are the only things that I care for, you know it. If it was not for Andres, I would be tempted to give up..."
I believe that you could never forgive yourself, if you gave up. Eddie doesn't matter. You have to do what ever is important to you."
"Me? I am just poor Florida white trash, and this is all I would ever be all my life, without you two. The only good thing I did for myself, up to now, has been playing basketball, and I owe this also to Andres..."
He learned basketball from the blacks. And that made of him the black sheep of his family. His parents hated the black people, his father, a very well known Baptist preacher, was more adamant than the others. His father accused him of having infringed on God's law, as blacks were cursed by God and would never enter his paradise. Cain's curse. The only way a black could set his foot in paradise would be God making him became a white, his father repeated. So, one day Thomas had enough of these absurdities, so he quarreled with his father. His father slapped him in his face and he reacted, giving him a punch. His father jumped him with a cane and after angrily beating him, threw him out of the house. His mother backed his father, yelling at his back that he could just go to be fed by the blacks. He was then sixteen.
It was then that the Robinsons, Andres family, his friend and member of his team, adopted him. They were poor people. They didn't even have a toilet in their home, had to take a bath in a tub in the courtyard. If there was bad weather, they put the tub next to the house door. Good people, especially the mother. Thomas lived there with nine other people -- Michael, twenty-two years old, Lukas twenty-one, Liza eighteen, Andres seventeen, Matthew fifteen, Rowena thirteen and Francis twelve. The two girls slept in the room of their parents, them six boys in the kitchen, on the floor on some mats that in day time they rolled and put away. In winter they wore their pajamas under their clothes to be warmer. And while sleeping they unconsciously squeezed one against the other. He normally slept between Andres and Michael, but always turned towards his friend and cuddling against him.
When they had been hired in the team of Miami University, on the same day, he was eighteen and Anders nineteen. And right on that day Rowena, who was three years younger than him, cornered him behind some crates in the courtyard and told him she was in love with him and wanted him to be her first man, It was something really beautiful, special, and Thomas feel in love with Rowena and with her strong sensuality.
Three months after the start of their relationship, a day that they had lingered in the showers and were alone, Andres said: "Thomas, I am jealous of you."
"Jealous? But you play lot better than me!"
"No, don't play the dummy. I know that you make love with my sister. That's why I am jealous. Not for the baskets."
"Are you angry with me? But I don't want just have my fun with Rowena, I swear. I love her and she loves me. Really!"
"That's why I am jealous." His friend insisted, frowning.
"Of Rowena and I?"
"Of you. I believed I was the most important for you, and instead..."
"But you are so very important, for me!"
"More than Rowena?" Andres asked unbelievingly while they were rinsing.
"Honestly... I don't know. But at least as much. I swear."
"But with her you make love."
"Well, I can't make it with you, can I?"
"On the contrary I... on the contrary I want it."
"You? Making love with me? But you have your girlfriend..." Thomas answered dumbfounded.
"But after I met you, and even more after you became one of us, I desire you... I love you, Thomas."
"I too love you, You are everything to me..."
"Then, show me." Andres simply said.
Thomas didn't have a moment of hesitation. He drew near him, and caressed his beautiful soft member and told him with a low voice, but without wavering: "If you want to take me... I'm ready."
"No, man, I don't want just to take you. I want to make love with you. I want to make you mine, but also to be yours."
"Do you want me to leave Rowena?"
"No, man. It will be enough knowing that you want to stay with me. It will be enough if we can love each other, you and I." Andres said pulling him against himself and Thomas felt that his friend's member was now erect and strong in his hands.
They united there, under the shower. They kissed, sucked, penetrated each other. Thomas thought he was becoming crazy for the incredible intensity of the pleasure and of the joy he felt uniting so intimately, completely with his Andres. For Andres he would give his life. Yes, he was madly in love with him. And he could feel all the deep love of Andres for him. They really were made one for the other!
But when he was alone with Rowena and she started making love with him, Thomas was uncertain, tense. Confused.
She was aware of that and said: "Thomas, Love... Is it because of Andres you are so tense today?"
"You know?" the boy asked, taken aback.
She said yes. Andres talked with her. And she said to her brother: "If you are in love, it's fine with me." She loved her brother, and was happy for his happiness. If the two boys were in love, it was fine with her -- only if Thomas didn't leave her.
So Thomas became the lover of both of them and honestly he would not be able to say if one of then could be more important than the other for him. He loved both with all of himself. And both deeply loved him.
Thomas had the feeling that the mother of the two boys understood everything, but she never said a word. The woman went to assist all their matches and she often pointed at Thomas to the people near her saying with pride: "He too is my son!"
Thomas owed everything to Andres -- basketball, a family, Rowena, and love...
Ten days prior, on a mild November morning, Thomas met Andres Robinson in the Florida State Prison, where the young man was detained for a sentence of sixteen years for homicide. It happened two years before, when Andres decided to rob a night safe at the Collins Avenue Branch of North Miami Beach. When the bank's guards went to empty the safe, Andres pulled out a sawed-off shotgun from his bag and made the guards give him the almost twenty thousand dollars that were in the safe. He disarmed them and ran away with his booty. He didn't think about the alarm -- while he was running away two more guards arrived and shot at him. He answered the gun fire -- one of the guards died.
The prison was far away from the university where Andres and Thomas played on the second team, that entered the national championship. Only Anders played on the national team. He had been hired when he was twenty by the Detroit Pistons who saw him play. Thomas had not been hireds -- the experts said he was not tall enough, not fast enough, not hard enough...
Thomas played as a professional only one year in Italy, making twenty six points per match for the Bologna team. In Italy he became a party animal, taken here and there by the wife of the teams owner. He became the lover, first of the boss' wife, then also of their twenty year old son, a boy lean and shy, but full of fire in bed. The father discovered everything and Thomas was still alive because his friends hid him in their car and took him into Switzerland before the three armed men broke into his apartment on San Giovanni Street.
In the parlor of the prison Thomas was sitting and looking at his image reflected on the glass separating the prisoners from their visitors. He noticed his first wrinkles, his first gray hairs, in spite of his twenty nine years. And then there was that noise, steel doors continually banging, a noise that echoed in his ears from the moment when he set foot in that place. For days after each visit, he heard that noise in his dreams, and at times it was so loud that he woke up breathless and panting.
Thomas wanted to smoke, but a notice warned it was prohibited. He was rummaging in his pockets looking for a chewing gum when Anderes made his entrance in the parlor, escorted by a massive bald warder. Andres, black, tall, was thirty years old, a long and friendly face, and was wearing an orange overall. He wore gray Reebok and a small green hat put on his shaved head. He sat only after the warder made him a sign. Andres Robinson, strongest and most valiant forward in the history of Florida University Basketball, who waited the authorization of a warder to sit! Good Lord!
Ignoring the plasters on his friend's face, Thomas switched on the intercom: "Hey man, happy to see you!"
"Thank you for coming, man." Andres was talking with the typical caution of a prisoner -- in a dangerous situation as a prison is, words really determine the possible survival of a man.
"Your face, friend... What happened?"
Andres brushed the plasters with his long dark fingers: "At least I saved the eye, but scars will remain. A big mess with one of the Jamaican bosses who was bossing around. They keep razor's blades in their mouth and they spit them on you. I fought with a Jamaican who said I paid his little boyfriend to give me head. He had a really sharp blade in his bed. I fucked him but it didn't end there. Last week his friends came looking for me. The Muslims stopped them, but not before they cut my face."
"I'm sorry, friend. Good Lord, just for a blow job..."
Andres sneered: "That was the accusation. In reality I regularly fucked him and for free... The boy liked doing it with me. You know how it is in here, just for a change... Only now people are waiting to see what I will do. I have to do something, you can't let a fucking bastard to mark you without a reaction. If I want to be respected and let in peace, I have to do something to that brother who sent those Niger's against me."
Thomas thought that he too could have been on the other side of the glass, with all he did. He sold steroids, sank boats to take the insurance money, signed stolen cheques, promoted concerts that did never happen, sold fake watches, received money for movies that were never realized...
He leant towards the glass, anxious to tell his Andres why he went to visit him: "That lawyer you told me about the last time I came, the Cuban who cares for the concession of freedom on parole... is he still active?"
"You mean DeLaquilla? Sure he still works. Always in business, but he is expensive. That one makes you pay even the air you breath in his office..."
"I can find the money. Is DeLaquilla honest?"
"Sure. Will be your old screw to pull out the money?"
"Who, that one? He buys me what I want, but make him pull out money is like trying to get alcohol from nails. He likes me physically, but he despises me. So, I decided to do him a trick and disappear. Therefore, yes, he will pull out the money, after all, and a lot, but without wanting it."
Andres burst in laughter: "But how it comes? You just married and you already seek divorce?"
"Andres, If I have to fuck with somebody, that one is you, none else, you know it!"
"I know man. Me too, it's the same. I miss you, you know it..."
Thomas read love and desire in the young man's eyes, and felt he was melting. Jesus Christ, and they could not even just touch each other's hand! He pressed his fingertips on the glass. On the other side Andres did the same. They looked each other on the eyes and said things that no word, no speech could tell.
"I'll take you out, Andres..." Thomas hoarsely murmured, then told him in great lines about the robbery he was organizing.
When he ended, Andres scratched his head: "It seems easy. But why that guy wants you in the business? Why doesn't he do all by himself?"
"He has his problem to place the things in England, an he is right. So here I come on scene -- do you remember Big Mike? When I had that restaurant in West palm Beach?"
"Yes, the fish eater... You managed that restaurant for some guys in New York, didn't you?"
"Right so. It was the first gang in business with some Cubans living here who wanted to flunk Castro. They needed a straw man to expand in Florida and open the restaurant. With the fame I got at the times of University I was the right guy. I was also their carrier -- I took money and things to New York. After the robbery, they are ready to buy the booty. They will give us fifty per cent when for any other they usually give just forty per cent. But they know me well. As soon as I have my part, I'll take you out from here."
"I can't even dream of such a thing. If you take me out from here... Mum doesn't feel too good after her heart stroke. You were really a friend to send her that money..."
"Don't talk bullshit, nigger! Mum Robinson has been the only mother I never had. And by the way, up to now, I couldn't send her so much. Now I have to go back to New York to set that business with the Italians and Big Mike. Such business you can't do them with a telephone. Then I'll go back to London, I take the things and I'll come back. Just wait for me."
"You are the only one who didn't forget I am here..."
"On our mother, I swear it on our mother, man, that I'll pull you out from here..."
He looked at Andres searching for something inside his overall without pockets. He extracted something that he pushed against the glass. It was a newspaper clipping, a picture of the University basketball team, shot the last year they played together. The picture, shot on the night when they won the semi-finals NCAA by one point, showed five players embracing during a break. That picture was published by the sport newspaper of all the State. Dirty with sweat, their faces filled with joy, pride and toil, the five boys embraced. Thomas was at the center, his arms around Glenn, Amhad, Jon and Andres -- he was the only white in that picture. Two days later they played the final of the championship and lost by ten points. But the picture had been shot on that night, the most beautiful of their life. It had been the best match that their team ever played. And Thomas and Andres, in their little hotel room, celebrated making love with infinite passion and sweetness.
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER SEVENTH
In my home page I've put some of my stories. If someone wants to read them, the URL is
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If you want to send me feed-back, please e-mail at
andrej@andrejkoymasky.com
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