Hard Case Crime: The Max by Jason Starr Ken Bruen Read Free Book Online

line of but he would, he was literary, like Amis and Borroughs. He’d just sit down one day and voila , masterpiece. You either had it or you didn’t and he bloody well had it.
    One literary effort that he actually did produce was a poem in the technical college entitled:
    Lenin and Your Letter
    He just flat out loved that title. It had politics, love and, to be totally honest, true resonance. And, okay, he’d been a little wiped when he wrote it, but excuse me, look at all the greats — Scott Fitz, Hem, Behan, Bukowski, Berryman, Jerry Rodriguez. Hadn’t they all been a little, well, spiffed when they wrote their finest work? You wanted pain, compassion, suffering, Sebastian knew you had to fucking live it.
    He just wished he could remember the bloody poem. Only one line had remained with him:
    Lenin, you Jewish hack
    Ah, the thrill. Did he actually write that? He did. Oh, Booker Prize be praised. And God bless Salman Rushdie. Sebastian had his very brief moment of fame as the student union, all five of them, had accused him of anti-Zionism. Lordy, it was what every real literary lion endured.
    Whoops, the deranged bitch was shaking him, not with the cleaver, least not yet, saying, “Hello, shite-face, time to like, you know, clean up?”
    And he did, but her language! Was that really necessary? She should go to the U.K. where they mightn’t like you but, by golly, they always had manners.
    They scrubbed the place down, every last drop of blood, etcetera, gone. Would they bring in forensics of the Greek variety? Hello, let’s be honest. The Greek variety of forensics was probably one greasy inspector with his hand out, dropping cigar ash all over the crime scene and trampling on bloodstains. They were clear, and if he could now just get clear of the mad cow he could get his show on the road.
    She gave him the golden opportunity, snapped, “Where are my fookin cigs?”
    And he jumped on it, said, “Hon, I’ll jump on the scooter, get you a fresh pack.”
    Then, distracted, she said, “And buy some booze, too. Jesus wept.”
    There was a ferry to Athens — he checked his fake Rolex — in two hours. He put the pedal to the metal and he was out of there. He had a tiny villa rented as close to the port as he could find. He’d learned the hard way, always have your getaway planned. All he needed was his passport, his Cambridge tie, borrowed (so to speak) from a chap — damn tie opened more doors than his wonderful polished BBC accent — his trusty Gladstone bag, one of the few genuine items he owned — and one of those Moleskine diaries, nicely weathered and one of these days, he might actually jot something down in it. He believed he looked suitably battered, had that climbed the Himalayas and crossed the damn Ganges look. Made him seem like a Bruce Chatwin traveler type. He hadn’t actually read Chatwin, but that hardly mattered. Most of all, he had his stash, the vital element, the get-out-of-town-and-fucking-fast-old-bean dosh.
    He wouldn’t have time to get the deposit back on his little scooter, but as he’d paid with a bum credit card, it was kind of poetic justice; and if he did take the time the psycho bitch would be starting to wonder was he making the bloody cigarettes and come looking.
    He shivered, seeing her with that cleaver. God he was sweaty, from fear and stress, the golly goshed heat. He liked to be always, in every sense, cool, but a cleaver can change a lot of habits. He’d had to forego taking a shower in his haste to get out, and he promised himself now that he’d book into the KingKronos in Athens, get the penthouse, use his Platinum Visa, only ever taken out for real occasions and Jolly Hockey Sticks, this was one of those times.
    He threw his Jermyn Street bespoke shirts, his beloved linen suit and Panama hat (his nod to Somerset Maugham — and, truly, he must read the crusty old bugger someday), and splashed some cologne on. Not too much, a hint darlings, not like the mad Paddy