Blood Is Dirt Read Online Free Page B

have you paid your chauffeur ten thousand bucks for a night’s work?’
    â€˜As a matter of fact this is the first time,’ he said, and socked back the chaser.
    â€˜What’s the name of your guarantor?’
    â€˜You don’t need to know and you don’t want to know.’
    â€˜Maybe I’d like to know. See if he’s on my party list. Get an invitation to him for my next one. If he’s this powerful I could use him in my business.’
    Napier got another Camel under way and used his thumb to get an imaginary plank out of his own eye.
    â€˜The less you know about this the better. You help me. You take your money. We never see each other again.’
    â€˜Just as we were getting beyond the small-talk stage, getting to know each other a bit...’
    â€˜Nobody knows me, Bruce, least of all myself. Time’s short. Are you in or out?’
    â€˜Where’s the meet?’
    â€˜Are you
in
or
out?’
    â€˜Why do you think I’m asking?’
    â€˜That’s not a yes and it’s not a no.’
    â€˜It means if we’re meeting in a private room in the Sheraton it’s a “yes”. If we’re meeting in an empty warehouse in the industrial zone it’s a big “no”. There are places to do these kind of things. I did one of these out in the bush in the Côte d’lvoire and nearly found myself as dead as the guy I was supposed to be meeting.’
    â€˜In a coconut grove opposite the Hotel Croix du Sud. They tell me there’s a bit of beach there where people go for picnics at the weekend.’
    â€˜Harmless enough during the day.’
    â€˜But you need your hand held at night.’
    â€˜This is not a good idea, Napier,’ I said. ‘What if I say no.’
    â€˜Nothing’s going to stop me going out there to take a look.’
    â€˜You’re a bastard.’
    â€˜Am I?’ he asked, innocent as cherry blossom. ‘You’re the one who said you wanted to make some money out of my... out of me, if it could be made.’
    â€˜That’s right. I’m upfront about what I want. You, on the other hand, won’t tell me a damn thing and then you corner me into feeling responsible for you... a white man in West Africa with...’
    â€˜You’re not doing it for free,’ he said, and smiled. Now that his face wasn’t a chiselled mess of fear and worry I could see what got him into a lot of trouble and what probably got him a lot of women too—a little-boy look. I dropped the chaser down the hatch and we went out to the car. I fitted the keys into the ignition and thought ten thousand dollars could solve a lot of problems and then stopped myself in case the next time I looked in the mirror I’d find Napier staring back at me.
    â€˜I don’t suppose you’ve got a gun, have you?’ he asked.
    â€˜Firing a piece of lead into human flesh, watching a man drop with a gut shot, seeing his life crawling away from him, takes something that I haven’t got. And you—if I remember rightly, Napier Briggs—got spooked from seeing a dead sheep in the car park, got the vom from seeing a little offal on the pavement. I don’t think you’re in any frame of mind to be going around pointing guns at people.’
    We drove back across the lagoon, up the main drag past the remains of the evening fish market and past the port which was lit up with ships being worked and loaded trucks queuing to get out on the road. The ship’s agents offices were dark and quiet on either side of the Boulevard de la Marina. We continued up past the Hotel du Port, the Présidence, the Hotel Croix du Sud and the huge expanse of
cocotiers
between the road and the sea. Napier watched it all go.
    â€˜Where are we going?’ he asked.
    I took a left before the conference centre on to a short causeway out to the new Novotel and parked up in its floodlit car park. The flags of all