Crime Time

Mick circled closest to the problem. "But your boss, let's say to clear one femme and keep another in the dark, he wasn't quite on the up and up in the dock. Say he finessed his statements. Somehow the law susses its incompleteness. They then can use his, er, gentlemanly evasions as a pry against his business dealings? That ain't right!"

"Even though one has nothing to do with the other," Tommy said, "you mean because he protected the lady, as well as diverted harsh attention off his missus? Can a man's decency be used to hang him on that other matter?"

"If possible, yes," Farrell said.

"You have 'extenuating circumstances' in America," Kurt said, preening somewhat after using the legal reference. "Surely your law officers realize certain interactions require propriety. Especially in public. But yet they want to hold the higher instance against the lower charge and force guilt?"

"Pretty much," Farrell said.

His three drinking companions scoffed, scowled while questioning the sanity of American jurisprudence. Their indignation almost edged into vehemence.

Usually European contentiousness, the Old World's well-honed ability of dissembling the most arcane subjects from every impossible angle mystified Farrell. After all, he wasn't Ian Abercrombie! Now there was an Easterner just a few short beers from personifying an intellectual!

Yet the Club's inability to reconcile the obvious seemed appropriate. Common sense said the two claims were exclusive. Only confounding legal logic could bind them so completely. Better, they left off altogether any injudiciousness by his boss, Roderick Quinn.

To a man Farrell hoped each judged both men's characters through their conduct; Quinn by his evasion, Farrell by his flight.

Mariel's detailing Omar's crew, its habits, the next target pushed Farrell. He discounted informing the police. They were unreliable professionals. Before any chance to bungle the bust, sieved information by Porteño cops would've tipped off the gang. Apprehending Omar and company needed Farrell's hands-on attention. The task needed an associate.

Any native Argentine acquaintances were immediately dismissed. Right or wrong, he saw them all as suspect. He shot down an idea of asking New York to deliver somebody capable and trustworthy. Time was short. Moreover, this task demanded a man familiar with the setting. Farrell cast eyes upon the Thursday Afternoon Club.

Tommy had the necessary mindset but was too old. Kurt's build and demeanor made him formidable, yet he seemed the sort who'd undergo some crisis of conscience where an instant begged reaction. It would have to be Mick or Plan B. Except there was no Plan B.

Mid-March, Farrell located Mick at one of his job sites. Workday sun reddened the fit Englishman. He jabbered a practical kind of Spanish his foreman then elaborated for the laborers. Seeing Farrell surprised the Englishman.

Mick smiled. "What do I owe this gift, my son?"

Farrell led them beyond earshot and quickly explained. Mick's face remained blank. At the end he simply agreed. His calmness shook Farrell.

Farrell gave him some 'exits.' "This could backfire. All sorts of crazy shit could jam us both up."

Mick grinned. "I'm not scared. I've been nicked before. Long before I became respectable, I mean. Being a model citizen has its advantages. Excitement isn't one of them. 'Sides, it'll break up my usual fucking routine!"

Mick enlisted, Farrell decided saving all reconnoitering for Holy Thursday. On that day the greater Buenos Aires populace would be fleeing, placing the city in flux. People eagerly looking towards an extended weekend should've provided ample cover for their sorties.

Another advantage with Mick as his accomplice: a gun up in the former navy man's face wouldn't necessarily send shit down both pants legs. Successful or not, Farrell's scheme required eventual police intervention. Buenos Aires cops followed the Latin American law enforcement pattern -- big guns and willingness to shoot. Especially at night.

After work Thursday, the two met near the prospective heist. As speculated, frenzied pedestrians thickened what ordinarily were sparsely-trod sidewalks. Farrell and Mick strolled inconspicuously. The apartment building, a bland eight-story edifice, had a doorman and motion-sensitive lights above the front overhang.

Mick said he thought the street looked familiar. Farrell half-heard him and grunted. Mick gandered further to refresh his memory.

Balconies started jutting on the second floor. Heavy gauge meshing enclosed each projection. Upon arriving in Buenos Aires these screens were among the first peculiarities Farrell noticed. Those and steel roll gates on windows. He wondered were these dissuasive measures recently introduced or had economic disparity always been so prevalent to demand them.

Short steps past the front door, the service entrance. Concertina wire topped an iron bar gate. Farrell fished two pieces of metal out of his pants pocket. While Mick's back shielded him, he inserted, twisted, jiggled them in the keyhole until the lock gave. At the end of the service path the door yawned open.

An alcove blocked direct sight from the front of the lobby. The service elevator and fire stairs stood hidden opposite the passenger lifts. Again another propped door. That one opened into the emergency stairwell. They hustled upward lightly. None of the fire doors they passed were ajar. Their ascent stopped on the roof landing.

Farrell checked the doorframe. No contact plates indicating any magnetized locks or sensors. Dull knob and spring cylinder suggested this assembly could've been installed since initial occupancy. They stepped onto the roof.

Hot as the sidewalk had been, sun off the tar roof scalded. His sight scoured the black plain. Nothing showed that residents used it for a convenient tanning beach or nighttime air refuge. At least he saw no cigarette butts, matches, wrappers, cans, bottles or cups.

Surrounding neighborhood structures conformed to the same approximate height. Variances were four or five feet at maximum. Fortunately, Farrell thought, these buildings were raised long after Buenos Aires' Beaux Arts infatuation. Some might've considered Modernism distant and brutal against the earlier style's sinuous curves and gentle slopes. However, decorative coves, cones or domes offered troublesome blinds.

Farrell walked to the roof's precipice. Below, balcony roofs, the overhang, trees blossoming across the sidewalk obscured this roofline. At night it would be invisible.

"I know this block," Mick repeated.

"Do you?"

"Yah. There's a knocking shop on the corner." Mick pointed.

"A what?"

"A bordello. Before I knew the score, I may've frequented it often."

"You have a whorehouse directory or something, Mick?"

The Englishman grinned. "Sometimes the anchor can't wait to be dropped."

Farrell laughed. "Okay. Show me this snug harbor."

He chased Mick across several roofs. After inspecting the door, Farrell picked the lock and they descended.

"The girls may work on the fourth floor," Mick said. "Best thing, no doorman. Just an intercom."

"Good," Farrell said. "I was wondering about access. With the motion light that time of night it'd just be our luck to have the city's only pair of sober eyes spot us while I'm jimmying the service gate. We'll drop in the same direction as Omar's crew. So, where are the working girls?"

"If that puff is still here, I guarantee women will be manning the mattresses Easter," Mick said.

"Better still the neighbors will be used to odd-hour traffic," Farrell said.

Downstairs in the foyer, they scanned the tenant directory. Among the fourth-floor addresses, "S. Desear."

Mick snickered. "You must love tarts with senses of humor."

"This is coming together," Farrell said.

Adriana worked at the restaurant Holy Thursday night. She didn't sleep at Farrell's afterward. Knowing how her family looked forward towards Pascua weekend at Mar del Plata, Farrell gave her cab money for the direct commute home. If they left thw city early enough perhaps they might avoid a bit of Route 2's glacial traffic jam.

On Good Friday he contacted Autera. Farrell requested the name and phone numbers (home and office extension) of an understanding officer with "pull" in the neighborhood comisaría. Autera accepted his vague necessity uncomplainingly. Any curiosity in Autera's voice faded into standard civil servant compliance. Mid-afternoon the go-between responded, giving Farrell what he needed about a Captain Stinelli. After that both wished the other pleasant holidays.

Holy days did not deter Sofia. With Adriana gone she sought to exploit her lengthy absence for all its worth. Not only Friday, but Saturday too. She would've enthusiastically infringed on Sunday if he hadn't quashed the possibility.

Hours before Sofia's second social-sexual marathon, Farrell shopped. Common as the sought items were Stateside, he expected trouble finding one, much less two, in Argentina. Instead their easy procurement merely proved a drunken half-assed hypothesis Paul Lowery slurred many years ago.

On the return to his apartment, Farrell visited a florist. He bought two dozen long-stem roses. Red and yellow. He insisted the clerk set the flowers in white cardboard boxes rather than wrap them in excelsior or display them in hard transparent plastic. Later that night he presented the red bouquet to Sofia and distributed the yellows among her court. The girls only saw him bearing paper-wrapped flowers. None ever knew about empty delivery boxes still in his apartment.

Their gratitude barely exceeded their senses of entitlement.

Farrell slept late Easter. He maintained his usual habits. Even if he wanted to phone Mariel for any late developments, he couldn't. She didn't own a phone and was likely to be elsewhere anyway.

Sunday night Farrell met Mick around 11. The Englishman questioned him regarding the two flower boxes he carried. Farrell preferred mild mystery, telling him "all will be revealed in time." Until then the American sprung for dinner and drinks.

Two hours later casually well-dressed pair taxied to "Desear." A woman buzzed them inside. The fourth floor was deathly quiet.

Farrell asked Mick if he recognized the carpet from his last visit.

"Until you mentioned it I didn't even know there was anything covering the floor," Mick answered.

A stern brunette opened the apartment door. She allowed entry into a commercial establishment masquerading as the put-upon man's home away from spouse. More clubhouse than whorehouse.

The apartment was spacious. Farrell suspected by its roominess several walls had been sacrificed towards expansion. Given moments to relax the brunette's steel eyes melted.

Her navy blue and white halter held one decent rack. A metallic green miniskirt below her ripped belly showcased muscular legs. A bored blonde joined them. Both women were in their rapidly depleting 20s.

The blonde's interest flared upon spying the flower boxes. It immediately died when Farrell pegged their gifts for others. He and Mick stacked them on the closest sofa.

The blonde was taller, skinnier than her co-worker. Outsized store-bought tits emphasized her thinness. She had a bland pretty face above floatation devices stuffed in an extra-long soccer jersey. When she wore pants Farrell bet she favored stovepipe jeans.

Business featured just these two tonight. Even the receptionist, or whore-wrangler, took the night off. Their stablemates either spent Easter in holy contemplation or lavished girlfriend experiences at Punte del Este, Mar, or Florianopolis. As expected, trade had been sparse. Farrell and Mick were the sole customers for the two who'd drawn short sticks.

Mick peremptorily selected the blonde. They marched off towards her mattress. The brunette had told Farrell her name but he'd already forgotten it. She led him into her workspace.

Ventilation serviced her bedroom well. None of that furtive sex smell lingered in the air-conditioned cool. Good lighting showed the room clean enough.

The price they negotiated was insulting -- to her. American dollar conversions against the local currency left him aware of vast disparities. She quoted a price which would've equaled an average Argentine's weekly salary. Pizza and beer money to him.

She stripped nonchalantly. He liked that. Farrell had known too many working girls who disrobed as if they headlined at the Lido.

Sex. Either through choice or necessity, this woman understood they engaged in business. Other, better, venues offered entertainment or amusement. Farrell, those preceding and proceeding him, entered these premises for sex. Primal, uncaring, just the desired activity.

Unclothed, both appraised the other. She had the tight Argentine body he now expected. Bikini tan lines denoted her the usual avid Porteña sun devotee. Her pubic grooming left trim enough to signify herself as a mature woman.

If he read her correctly, she found the lean taut body stretching under his weathered face surprising. A pleasant one. Perhaps she verged on actually grinning. Room light was bad for nuance. He fisted his meat and angered it into rigidity.

Off to the side Farrell saw incline cushions. All he wanted was a fuck. Foreplay and coddling weren't on tonight's program. That's what he provided Adriana and Sofia. The closer the robbery approached, the more crowded his mind. He gestured at the sex aids.

Sourness wrinkled the working girl's lips. While she gathered then arranged cushions atop her bed, Farrell mused about less acquiescent nights. He sure didn't miss standing while jamming some ass-up/face down woman perched on a mattress edge.

Hoping it wasn't made in China, Farrell unfurled the house-supplied rubber. Thoughtfully she kept a tube of sex grease handy. He glazed intimate 40 weight along his rock-hard tool then applied rough dabs in her tender crack. Just to keep her guessing, Farrell rammed a goo-laden finger up her shit chute.

The subsequent start and air caught in her throat let him laugh. Her sphincter sealed around his finger tighter than a too small ring. So tight he pushed her bunched ass as he yanked his finger out. He mounted the bed, then her. Farrell's blunt head bumped inside her thighs before finding that honey heaven and cramming it.

She retorted helplessly every time his hips pounded her ass. Feeble air conditioning weakened more and more with his every thrust.

For a whore her pussy was snug. Naturally should he compliment her, she'd reply he was huge. Such fawning would've resulted in a wash.

Farrell stroked steadily. His mind seized and released imminent matters. What was hostage to chance? What could go awry? Contingencies? Thoughts constricted, his concentration wandered.

From a lifetime ago he conjured Ingrid. The only lover Farrell ever regretted losing. Lush thistle-tinted hair, fair skin and freckled, her voluptuousness luscious, Ingrid embodied the opposite of his female preferences. In youth until tonight Farrell wanted his women dark and compact. The fiery kind who trended towards mercurial. Ingrid's calm white girl rationality sideswiped aloof.

In a way if he hadn't met her maybe now Farrell wouldn't be punishing some firm Porteña rump. His entire adulthood perhaps turned on Ingrid's desire for stability. She'd been a service brat, having lived in places he never suspected existed. Her recitations of life in Anatolia and southeast Asia turned his native Southwest gray and dull. For a time she even made him resent his folks' choices; those which dumped them there in the desert.

Only after he entered full adulthood did Farrell realize the unformed selfish stupidity Ingrid's influence raised. His. Ingrid. She hadn't tempted and mocked him through daydreams or duress in months.

Farrell slipped his hands between the incline cushion and the shaking whore's damp chest. He palmed both her girls. Her nipples further peaked under his considerate handling. The weight and heft of real breasts felt good. He'd gladly accept the smallest handful of true tits over a pneumatic saline set any day.

He spurted furiously. Her body language told him she'd submitted completely to being overwhelmed. Now through final pure power lunges her body verged on relief. Spent, Farrell having snaked out, she adhered gratefully along the cushion, her back and ass glistening.

While she gathered herself Farrell reclined off to the side. Weak fingers, hers, played with his nipples. After a while she just let that hand rest over his heart. They remained immobile until the inevitable beckoned him into dressing. Covered by a dangerously short robe, she followed him barefoot from the room.

Bedroom sounds told Farrell Mick still stropped his date. Farrell and his girl wound up in the tidy, well-appointed kitchen. When she offered him a drink, he asked for water. The woman correctly guessed and fetched him a noncarbonated bottle. Thirsty, he gulped it.

He hadn't heard the simmering teapot. She grabbed a maté cup from the cabinet. Into this she stuffed crushed leaves from a jar. Cup packed she drove a metal straw into the loam and poured steaming water. The brew bubbled.

Her sip of the drink created no facial disfiguration. She offered him her cup. Farrell instantly accepted it. He slugged, hoping his swallow left no visible result. South Americans found maté refreshing. To his Yanqui palate the bitter broth was one step above friendly torture. However, refusing to partake might've been deemed an insult.

Soon enough Mick finished driving his girl. Looking sappy on the way to cheese-eating, he entered the kitchen. The blonde shuffled behind him.

Apparently their frenzy affected her wardrobe selection because she joined them topless above a pair of camel toe inducing powdery blue soccer shorts. Had he wanted Farrell couldn't have wrested eyes off her tits, the small nipples of which stared back. Two melon-solid hemispheres hung perpendicular off her birdcage upper torso.

Farrell's whore distracted him. She offered Mick her maté cup. The Englishman's face surfed into distaste.

"Er, well, no thanks. I'm trying to cut back. All the way."

Between themselves the working girls cut eyes brimming with lethal disdain. Even if it hadn't been time to leave, the customers' departure became the better part of discretion. The men collected their flower boxes, bade "Ciao-Ciao!" and snuck up to the roof.

There, moon glow pulled blue from black. Farrell's eyes swept the area. Nothing seen, nothing heard. They walked towards the prospective crime scene. Mick glanced up and regarded the night sky.

"Ain't this full moon going to be their problem?" he whispered.

"Earlier, yeah, it would've been," Farrell quietly answered. "But the moon has slid from front to back. Instead of being lit, they'd be silhouetted."

"How --?"

" -- Checked the week's phases, then last night I gauged positions."

"Christ!" Mick hissed, amazed. "In the service, what were you? In logistics or some shit like that?"

Farrell grinned. "I was a liquor control officer during the War Against Boredom."

At the roof access door, Farrell quickly thwarted the lock. They scurried downstairs. On the appropriate landing Farrell listened for corridor activity before cracking the fire door. Clear, they stepped briskly into the passage and advanced to the right apartment.

He hadn't worried about this residence having alarms. The maid serving here, whose chatty exchanges formed a loose and lippy citywide compendium of bandied privacy, confirmed its owners couldn't afford monitoring costs.

In Buenos Aires museums and public edifices could barely absorb expenses for sophisticated prevention or detection measures. Nonetheless once inside the dark hush reassured Farrell. Thankfully neither the residents nor the maid had drawn curtains across any windows. Instead scrims fuzzed views and light.