Page 65 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
One of the men who had stood behind Percy in the elevator laid a hand on Percy’s shoulder to push him into the room, and before the door closed, Percy’s palm met his chin, smashing his teeth together with a stomach-churning squelch that severed his tongue in one blow. Percy barely noticed the blood that gushed to the white carpet as his right foot linked around behind the man’s left leg, dropping him quickly while Percy wrenched the man’s gun free from its holster.
He turned swiftly, took fast aim, and with a deafening bang, another man’s brains drenched the walls before the one at his feet was relieved of his life in the same way. The gun was then aimed straight at the face of the handsome security guard, while the fourth, wisely, stayed exactly where he was.
Percy shifted the gun to cover the other man, locking eyes with the handsome one all the while. “I have a very important appointment to keep, and we have even less time now. Do you want to live or don’t you?”
“I do,” said the man.
“And you?” asked Percy, his icy blue eyes shifting across to read the other one’s expression.
“Y-yeah,” he stammered. “Me too.”
“Very good,” Percy said.
The phone rang at his elbow. Two of the three jumped at the sound. Percy calmly reached out and picked it up. “Yes?” A moment of silence. “I didn’t hear a thing. It must have been on another floor.” He placed the receiver back down and said to the normal-looking one, “You. Gun and identification on the floor. Slowly.”
The man did as he was told. Percy then flicked the gun to direct him to move well back, and he had the handsome one do the same. Percy stooped to collect the items, glancing over the names and addresses written on the cards as he did so.
“I’ll still pay you,” Percy said. “And I’ll pay you well. A deal is a deal, and it’s in all our best interests that we get along. But I want to be clear…” Both men felt their stomachs turn to stone as the beautiful lips explained, “I know where you live now. And better than that, I know who you are. A change of address won’t stop me. If you betray me, I will track you down. One by one, I will pick off everyone you love, and second to last, I will kill your children in front of you. Then I’ll kill you too. Slowly. Do you understand?”
A step too far? Their nauseated agreement suggested otherwise, but Percy generally believed lies should stick as close to the truth as possible if one were hoping to get away with them. In reality, he did not and would not kill children, he hated to take away anyone’s father (if he stopped long enough to think about who he was killing), and the holiday, overall, had been such a bitterly disappointing experience that nothing would drag him back to Libya short of a near-apocalyptic event. That last thought reminded him sharply he needed to get the sheath out of Cleo’s reach and fast.
“Tareq,” he addressed the handsome one. “You’re to go upto the loft, put everything you can find in the suitcase and bring it down. Lay the suits out flat. Don’t wrinkle them. You have five minutes.”
Tareq nodded his lovely, pensive face and made for the stairs. Percy immediately regretted his choice as he was now left with the far plainer, really perfectly acceptable and normal looking, but not-at-all astonishing Waleed.
“What’s she paying you?” Percy asked.
He was happy to find the man quite capable of doing business when he replied, “Fifteen hundred dinars. Daily.” Well above the going rate. High enough to be a complete lie.
“Tareq,” Percy called up the stairs. “What’s she paying you?”
“One thousand per day,” Tareq called back.
Waleed paled slightly, but Percy only said, “I wonder why she pays you so much more.” He made his way across the room to a safe, working the mechanism swiftly until the door cracked open. “I’ll pay you each twice that, per day, for four days. I’m quite sure she’ll want to depart tomorrow, but I’m afraid you’ll have a few bruises and scrapes when you leave here, so consider it compensation.”
From the safe he removed a black bag containing the kind of ample supply of cash a dishonest man needs in a country that tolerates neither travellers cheques nor functioning automated teller machines.
The gun close at hand all the while, Percy counted out a portion of money for each man, then zipped the bag up tight. Tareq returned with Percy’s belongings neatly arranged as directed, and Percy beamed a friendly smile up at him. “Let’s make it look good. Waleed, you’re going to need to punch him. I’m saving my hands for a long drive.”
“What?” said a shocked Tareq, frantic gaze running between Waleed and Percy. “No, man. No way. We’ll just wait here until you’re gone.”
“And tell her what?” said Percy, crossing an ankle over his knee and lighting a cigarette. He raised his chin towards the corpses in the doorway. “They have a good excuse for letting me go, but what’s yours? If you walk out of here without a scratch, she’ll know you took a bribe, and then it’s game over.”
A muscle at the side of Tareq’s pretty lips twitched.
“But not the face,” Percy said, watching him. “Just in the stomach or something.”
Waleed’s eyes also went from one to the other, noting Percy’s study of Tareq’s features, and Tareq’s happy acceptance of Percy’s aesthetic direction. “Have I got to get punched in the face?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Percy coughed. “Get to work.”
Tareq sighed and shifted on his feet as Waleed turned towards him, shrugging apologetically.
“This is bullshit,” Tareq mumbled, lifting up his shirt to reveal some of the hardest, most well-defined abs Percy had ever seen. And he had seen a lot.
“Sorry, Waleed,” Percy said, internally wincing at the likelihood of Waleed breaking at least one finger punching what looked to be as firm and solid as chiselled marble. “Careful of your hand.”
Waleed stretched his fingers open and closed in readiness.
