The Max Read online

  Cut to the chase and chase it was. They’d had to flee to America and would you believe it, back into a scheme where yet again she tried to make Max Fisher pay for the shite she’d endured.

  She sighed at the memory, muttered, “Let it slide.”

  So she’d grabbed some bucks and gone to Greece. Visited some relatives in Xios, but that got old fast, so she ferried to Santorini, supposed site of Atlantis. Got to be good karma there, right?

  Um, for a start, what was with the fucking donkeys having to carry you up the cliff to the town? She must’ve missed that in the guidebooks. But being American carried some weight still, especially if you were a hot, stacked blonde.

  She rented a small villa and was surprised at how cheap it was. Georgios, who owned the place, also claimed he was mayor of the village and drove a cab at night and was the chef at the local taverna. These Greeks, they knew how to multi-task. He was ogling her openly, staring at her bust to the point where she had to hit him with the old “My eyes, they’re, like, up here.” At the door, he held her arm and reminded her how reasonable that rent was and how, if she was a little cooperative, the rent might disappear completely.

  She knew some Greek, about four words but all the vital ones, and said, “Mallakas,” i.e. wanker, and he fucked off.

  First it was heaven, the balcony overlooking the sea, sipping on some ouzo, her tan coming along nicely, showing off her serious cleavage. The nude beaches were great, but the constant Greeks hitting on her became a drag. She was so desperate she would’ve settled for a mick.

  She was offered a job as a hostess in a club named “Acribos.” Her second Greek word: “Exactly.”

  When she wasn’t tanning, she was hiking in the dunes, or just hanging out at the local taverna spinning worry beads, drinking ouzo, and playing backgammon. It was relaxing but, let’s face it, boring as hell. She was Angela Petrakos. She needed a buzz, she needed action.

  She made a friend at the taverna – Alexandra, an American from Berkeley. They decided to hit the clubs one night and a hit they were. It might’ve helped that they were the only two women in the place without facial hair, but guys were all over them all night. Near closing time they hooked up with a couple of young Italians who claimed they were eighteen but Angela figured that hers, Luca, was sixteen tops. Alexandra and her guy disappeared, and Angela and Luca wandered down to the beach. She had a full moon, crashing waves, and a horny young Italian. What else did a girl need?

  And the guy might’ve been a teenager but, boy, he knew how to screw. They went at it all night till they collapsed in exhaustion. In the morning, Luca was gone and so was Angela’s money. The little bastard had gone through her purse and cleaned her out. Good thing Angela wasn’t carrying much. The kid got sixteen euro, Angela got six orgasms. Who got the better deal?

  Alexandra left town the next day and Angela was back on her own again. People had been getting to know her and generally treated her fine, but this one old woman, must’ve been a hundred, gave her the heebie-jeebies from day one. When Angela walked along the streets most people would say yassou, hello, to her. But this woman would just glare at Angela, giving her the Evil Eye, as if she knew, but knew what?

  Then one evening at the taverna, she was beginning to get that bored, pissed off feeling again – never a good sign – when she heard, “My word, what a vision of true beauty.”

  Turned to see this tall guy, looked like that writer Lee Child, whom she hadn’t actually read but from the photos on the back of his books she nearly believed there might be a reason to read those mystery novels. She had a Barry Eisler book cause of his jacket photo and one by C.J. Box – hey, she’d always been a sucker for guys in cowboy hats. Who cared if these guys could write, they looked hot. No wonder the Micks had to actually write books, mangy-looking bastards they were.

  The Lee Child guy was wearing, oh saints above, a safari jacket, and he had that young Roger Moore look. The best part: A British accent.

  She muttered, “Thank you, God.”

  Finally, her luck had changed, a Brit, was there an American gal on the planet didn’t want to hear that Brideshead Revisited tone?

  He asked, oh those fucking make-you-moist manners, “May I join you?”

  She would’ve let him do a lot more than that. But she figured, British guy, he was probably reserved and well-mannered. She didn’t want to turn him off and be, like, too forward.

  “Oh, yes, please do,” she said, trying to sound British, but the American was coming through loud and clear.

  He held her hand, kissed it, said, “I’m Sebastian.”

  God, that accent! She was tempted to shout “I’m available!” but went with, “I’m Angela.”

  He told her all about himself. Said he was living off a trust fund, traveling the world, and he was, naturally, writing a novel. The writing part she could’ve guessed. For some reason, she was a magnet for those literary types – maybe it was a misery-loves-company kind of thing.

  When it was her turn she knew honesty was the worst policy. She said she’d lived in New York for a while but things hadn’t worked out with her fiance, then she’d moved to Ireland for a while, tried New York again, and now she was giving Greece a shot. She, er, forgot to mention all the violence.

  He looked her in the eyes, held her gaze, and said, “I must say, in all my travels, I’ve never encountered anyone quite as stunning as you.”

  An all-too-familiar voice in Angela’s head was screaming, Run! Get the fook out while you still can! How many times had she been down this road, meeting a guy who seemed like “the one,” only to wind up screwed, and not in the good way? She didn’t have baggage, she had freakin’ cargo. Or, as they say in the south, she’d been ridden hard and hung up wet.

  Translation: She didn’t trust nobody.

  Later, when Sebastian asked if he could give her a lift home, Angela said politely, “No, thank you.”

  She hardly believed it herself. Had she really turned down an easy lay with James Bond’s twin?

  “I must see you again,” he said.

  His eyes looked so vulnerable, like Colin Firth’s. She was tempted to say, screw it, and drag him back to her place and fuck him stupid. But she remained strong, said, “Well my schedule’s pretty full.”

  “Surely you can squeeze me in somewhere,” he said, punning like ol’ Roger Moore himself.

  But she remained strong – when had she ever had the discipline to do that? – and told him, “Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.”

  But he insisted on seeing her and she said she “might” be able to meet him for a drink at a taverna near the beach the next afternoon.

  Of course she showed. The following night they went out to dinner. At the end of the night he gave her a peck on the cheek goodnight and asked her when he might have the pleasure of seeing her again. She didn’t sleep with him until the fourth date – okay, the third, but who’s counting? Still, it had to be some kind of record.

  And then one night, not long after, he uttered the lure, the never-fail, hook-’em-every-time words and, even more damning, in Greek: “Sagapoh.” I love you.

  In any language and especially in that British accent, she was signed, sealed and kebabed. It was beautiful, lyrical, her beau had finally arrived. He was even talking about taking her to England for a weekend to meet his Mum and Dad. Yeah, she was seriously getting into the idea of marrying Sebastian, settling down, becoming British. Her grandfather, the Brit-hating bastard, would probably turn in his grave, but who gave a shite? She’d be like Madonna. She was already refining her accent and when they got married maybe she’d adopt an African child or, hell, steal one.

  She felt like her life was finally starting to get on track. She was still young, just thirty-three. Maybe twenty or thirty years from now she’d be happily married to Sebastian, their kids off at University, and she’d laugh at some of the “mistakes” she’d made early on in her life.

  One tiny little glitch hardly worth mention
ing, but one night, they were dining at a posh restaurant overlooking the seas when the waiter returned with Seb’s Visa card, saying it had been refused. But it was no biggie. As he put it, “Nothing to get your knickers in a twist about, love.”

  Angela paid in cash, tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed a glint in Seb’s eyes, no, surely a trick of the Greek light. And okay, so she seemed to be picking up the tab more often, and Seb, the handsome rogue, holding his cig exactly like she’d seen in all those movies, saying, “Darling, slight hitch with the old trust fund, they want to increase my allowance but I damn well refused, I’m writing an opus to make Lawrence Durrell want to weep, so I say damn their impertinence, I’ll pay my own way or go down like Khartoum, blazing but bloody defiant.”

  The fuck was he talking about? She didn’t care, she loved it because of the accent. And she loved he was an artist, a real writer, not like her old boyfriends, Dillon with his poetry and Slide with the fucking screenplay he kept talking about. So what if she never actually saw Sebastian, um, write? Once she wondered, Wouldn’t, like, a laptop have helped? But she refused to give in to those negative waves. She figured he was literary, kept it all in his head. This was love, the real thing; so what if there were a few inconsistencies? As her mick exes used to say, “Damn the begrudgers.”

  Then one evening she was at her villa, showering, when she heard a noise in the other room. She figured it was Sebastian, as she’d given him a key to her place.

  “Come in, Sebs, darling, I’m feeling quite horny at the moment and a bit of a screw in the shower would be lovely indeed.”

  Yeah, the Madonna accent was coming along well.

  She parted the curtain, smiling, expecting to see Sebs, and then gasped when she saw Georgios, her landlord. His squat body, the clumps of hair from out of his dirty wife-beater, that scowling look – he was like some kind of deranged animal. And, fookin A, was that a meat cleaver in his hand?

  He growled in Greek, spraying saliva, ending with, “you dirty cunt,” and came after her. She managed to duck to her left just in time, the cleaver slicing through the curtain. Naked and wet, she darted out of the bathroom, screaming, but he tackled her from behind. He had the cleaver to her throat.

  She closed her eyes, waiting to die and to be with her mother and father again – she just hoped to God there wouldn’t be spoons and bodhrans in heaven.

  But he wasn’t going to kill her, not yet anyway. She should’ve known.

  When he was through, his sweat was dripping, no pouring, off his body, onto the back of her neck, and he leaned closer to her, said, “You be my wife, okay? You drive taxi, okay?”

  Then she heard, “By God, love, are you all right?”

  Sebastian, the useless bastard. He sees her lying on the floor underneath a mad Greek rapist and he asks if she’s all right? She was tempted to say, Yes, I’m doing wonderful, darling. Why don’t you put the kettle on and come join us?

  But she noticed that Georgios was momentarily distracted and she seized the opportunity and went for the cleaver. The bastard wouldn’t let go of it, so she had to bite on his ear, as hard as she could, tasting the sweat and blood. Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that Sebastian was just standing there with a curious expression, like he was watching a fookin’ snooker match. These Brits, unless they were shooting boyos they were feckin’ useless.

  Angela didn’t stop biting on the Greek’s ear. Finally, after she’d kneed him in the balls a couple of times, the cleaver clanged to the floor and she grabbed it. She started hacking into his chest, slashing and swiping. It seemed like all of the past few years were welling up, fueled by the smell of this fooking animal. And she let him have it, all right. Never fook with a woman who has the Greek-Irish gene.

  She was kneeling over her victim, gasping, her hands covered in blood. Then she raised the cleaver again and Sebastian went, “Darling, it’s not necessary, the bugger’s already done for.”

  Through her pain and rage, the Brit accent gave her a moment of joy. Then she heard the word bugger. By fuck, bugger.

  Georgios, somehow still alive, was coming round, muttering, “Mallakas, menu…?”

  She’d give him mallakas, thinking of all the ferocity she’d learned from the micks in her bedraggled life, all the shite from one Max Fisher who’d once said, “Gonna put the meat to you, bitch.”

  She’d let the bitch part slide, but meat? All three inches of his top sirloin?

  She raised the cleaver and Sebastian, in that beautiful accent pleaded, “Darling… don’t.”

  She grabbed Georgios by his hair, gave him one ferocious slash across the neck, nearly decapitating the bastard, then said, “Word to the wise, darling, don’t ever fuck with me.”

  Then she and Sebastian were on the floor, going at it like animals. The power surge, as she saw the majestic Brit underneath her, her using him, and saw – was it fear? – in his eyes. Probably had a little to do with the cleaver still grasped in her right hand. What you might term a power ride.

  He whimpered, “Darling, this is all quite nice, but is the, um, weapon necessary?”

  And she began to laugh, laugh and come, swung the cleaver across the room and it landed with a pleasing thump against the wall.

  Later, when she came round, Sebastian had cleaned up, the Brits, a tidy race. Georgios was neatly wrapped in a roll of plastic sheeting and the blood splatter had been washed clean. She wrapped a flokati rug around her and Sebastian, looking like death warmed up, gave her a cup of the thick sweet Greek coffee, and said, “Precious, we might be, um, in a spot of, um, bother.”

  She nearly started laughing again, said, “Bother. Trust me, lover, bother is my forte.”

  She drank the coffee, handed him the cup, demanded, not asked, “More.” Then ordered, “Put some of that Metaxi in it, I need to focus.”

  Making it very clear who had the balls in this relationship.

  By dawn’s early light, they’d used Sebastian’s tiny scooter and driven precariously to the cliff on the other side of the island. All the time, Sebastian expecting the cops to stop them at any moment, and them carrying a literal dead weight between them, on a bicycle built for two, as that awful song goes. Angela behind, a new Angela to him, urging, “Get a fooking move on, people will be moving soon.”

  Lord above, she scared the daylights out of him. He’d thought he’d scored himself a rich American dumb blonde and instead had the Greek version of Fatal Attraction, with a cleaver no less. Oh lordy, how had he gotten it so wrong?

  She was screaming, “What kind of bike is this for a man? You ever hear of a Harley? Like, a man’s machinery?”

  He was too scared to answer, the demented creature had probably still got the cleaver somewhere. She had seemed awfully attached to it and if he lived to be a hundred, scratch that, if he got to see noon, he’d never forget the way she’d hacked the poor Greek bastard to ribbons. And yes, he hadn’t been the most useful person in her predicament, seeing the randy chap, um, having his way with her. Gosh, it had been almost exciting. And to say she’d overreacted, I mean really. Didn’t she know those Med types were hot blooded? It wasn’t like the gell (pronounced thus) hadn’t been down the M1 before. And then, oh lordy, the cleaver. She was like some bloody Irish guttersnipe.

  He’d been in some scrapes, a chap doesn’t get to his late twenties, alright, mid-thirties, without the odd ruction, but this, this was like, what was that awful Hollywood tripe? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? This was like living a gosh-awful B-movie he and the chaps might rent after a night on the tiles in Cambridge.

  Oh, he swore, by all that Cambridge held sacred, if he got free of this mad cow, he was legging it back to Blighty and scoring some dosh however he might and heading straight for Italy, some civilized European country where being British still counted for something. Naturally Sebastian had never actually been to Cambridge. He’d flunked out of a third-rate technical college but come on, isn’t a chap allowed a little leeway?

  And weak –
no one knew better than he how lily-livered he was. As a child, he’d seen the movie The Four Feathers; that was him without the end heroics and redemption. He got by on his diminishing trust fund, wonderful manners, sheer culture and, dammit, his boyish good looks. No one, he knew this, no one could do that toss of the black lustrous hair, the vulnerable little-boy-lost look better than he. He had nothing else going for him, he knew that, but with a little luck he’d been hoping it would, at the bloody least, net him one of those rich dumb Americans of which the States seemed to produce a never-ending supply.

  She was hammering his back. Damn it all, his back was fragile, old rugger injury. Okay, he never played, but he did follow the game all right.

  She was screeching, “Here, you dumb fook.”

  Crikey, her language was simply appalling.

  They dropped ol’ Georgios off the cliff and Sebastian, nigh hysterical now, wanted to shout, as the body hit the ocean, Beware of Greeks bearing cellophane. And he thought, dammit, he might just yet write the great Brit novel. Evelyn Waugh, eat your bitter heart out.

  Three

  Hell hath no fury like a mystery writer… dropped.

  Paula Segal was nervous, not a feeling she liked having. She laughed to herself, thinking, Feeling Nervous, she might use that for a title. Or Twisted Feelings? Or maybe Hard Feelings – someone else had probably already used that but fuck him, you couldn’t copyright a title. Then she sighed and said out loud, “Bad joke.” Like she was ever going to have a shot at titling another book.

  She was meeting her agent for lunch, not dinner. You knew when they moved you from dinner to lunch, you were semi-fucked, only one unearned-out advance away from a fast latte in Starbucks. Just ask that poor Irish bastard who’d been hot for all of ten minutes. Jesus, he’d had more agents than lattes and look at him now. He couldn’t even make a panel at the U.K. Festivals.