As he descended the stairs into the darkened sex shop he heard the exchange of farewells in the street outside, followed by the slamming of car doors and the purring departure of expensive cars. A good night with good friends, what more could any man reasonably ask?
At the bottom of the stairs he stopped for a moment. The blinking street-sign lights opposite illuminated the shop sufficiently for him to make out the rows of magazines. Their plastic-bound faces glinted; siliconed breasts and spanked buttocks swelled from the covers like over-ripe fruit. Faces dripping mascara pouted at him, offering every lonely satisfaction paper could promise. But he was unmoved; the time had long since passed when he found any of that stuff of interest. It was simply currency to him; he was neither disgusted nor aroused by it. He was a happily married man after all, with a wife whose imagination barely stretched beyond page two of the Kama Sutra, and whose children were slapped soundly if they spoke one questionable word.
In the corner of the shop, where the Bondage and Domination material was displayed, something rose from the floor. Maguire found it hard to focus in the intermittent light. Red, blue. Red, blue. But it wasn’t Norton, nor one of the Perlguts.
It was a face he knew however, smiling at him against the background of ‘Roped and Raped’ magazines. Now he saw: it was Glass, clear as day, and, despite the coloured lights, white as a sheet.
He didn’t try to reason how a dead man could be staring at him, he just dropped his coat and his jaw, and ran.
The door was locked, and the key was one of two dozen on his ring. Oh Jesus, why did he have so many keys? Keys to the
warehouse, keys to the greenhouse, keys to the whorehouse. And only that twitching light to see them by. Red, blue. Red, blue.
He rummaged amongst the keys and by some magical chance the first he tried slotted easily in the lock and turned like a finger in hot grease. The door was open, the street ahead.
But Glass glided up behind him soundlessly, and before he could step over the threshold he had thrown something around Maguire’s face, a cloth of some kind. It smelt of hospitals, of ether or disinfectant or both. Magure tried to cry out but a fist of cloth was being thrust down his throat. He gagged on it, the vomit-reflex making his system revolt. In response the assassin just tightened his grip.
In the street opposite a girl Maguire knew only as Natalie (Model: seeks interesting position with strict disciplinarian) was watching the struggle in the doorway of the shop with a doped look on her vapid face. She’d seen murder once or twice; she’d seen rape aplenty, and she wasn’t about to get involved. Besides, it was late, and the insides of her thighs ached. Casually she turned away down the pink-lit corridor, leaving the violence to take its course. Maguire made a mental note to have the girl’s face carved up one of these days. If he survived; which seemed less likely by the moment. The red, blue, red, blue was unfixable now, as his airless brain went colour-blind, and though he seemed to-snatch a grip on his would-be assassin, the hold seemed to evaporate, leaving cloth, empty cloth, running through his sweating hands like silk.
Then someone spoke. Not behind him, not the voice of his assassin, but in front. In the street. Norton. It was Norton. He’d returned for some reason, God love him, and he was getting out of his car ten yards down the street, shouting Maguire’s name.
The assassin’s choke-hold faltered and gravity claimed Maguire. He fell heavily, the world spinning, to the pavement, his face purple in the lurid light.
Norton ran towards his boss, fumbling for his gun amongst the bric-a-brac in his pocket. The white-suited assassin was already backing off down the street, unprepared to take on another man. He looked, thought Norton, for all the world like a failed member of the Klu Klux Klan; a hood, a robe, a cloak. Norton dropped to one knee, took a double-handed aim at the man and