Patrick
Something Patrick Laforêt loved almost as much as he loved women was speed. Especially on a machine like the one between his knees right now, with the exhaust pipes under the seat roaring like a jet at takeoff.
The Ducati 748S was a beauty, sleek as a stealth fighter-jet with its matte-gray paint job and red magnesium wheels. There was nothing to beat it, except maybe his Porsche. He regretted losing that Porsche but Evgenia had said it had to go. It was too easy to trace to him. She was right, of course. Evgenia was always right. She seemed to know about these things, the way other women know how to look after a baby.
He revved the engine as he drove onto the autoroute, streaking past the competition, leaving them in his dust like the ordinary people they were. Ordinary meaning poor. Patrick knew what it felt like to be poor and it was not a good feeling. Being broke did not make him happy; he was a man who enjoyed the finer things in life and the respect that money brings. He’d struggled with that problem for a long time, sometimes up and sometimes down, but now the future was all set to be up.
He patted the envelope tucked into the inner pocket of his denim jacket, feeling its edges hard against his chest. Evgenia had done it again; their nest egg was growing, but not fast enough for her. She was as ambitious as he was and twice as ruthless. For instance, he could never have come up with the plan she had devised, never in a million years. Maybe you had to be Russian, or a woman, or both, to come up with a scheme like that. Or maybe you just had to be beautiful enough to get away with it.
It was her beauty that had taken his eye, of course, the first time he’d seen her, lunching at Club 55. Le Cinquantacinque was the glitterati’s favorite afternoon beach rendezvous. Everyone who was anyone and who was in Saint-Tropez or on their yacht came to the Cinquantacinque’s terrace for lunch. There were flowers on the tables and champagne in silver coolers, and the best bodies clad in the best designer bikinis and shirts and sandals you’d see any where in the world.
It was a year ago. Patrick was sitting at a table under the white canvas awning, alone for once, since the guy who was supposed to meet him, and whom he was about to ask for a serious loan, had not shown up. Probably gotten wind of what was to come, he thought, gloomily sipping a beer.
Now he was stuck with having to pay for his own lunch, and though they knew him well here, they were not happy to have him taking up an important table that could be turned over more profitably. He understood. The season was short, everyone had to make their money while they could.
He finished his beer and was contemplating moving on, lunch less, when he spotted the windblown blonde standing at the front of the motor launch cutting through the water, heading for the club. The boat was a Riva, slim as a cigarette, enameled a bright yellow that matched the blonde’s bikini. She was as tall as any Las Vegas showgirl. And diamond studded. And knockout gorgeous.
“Rich girl” was written all over her but that was just an extra added attraction. She stalked past his table, following the maître d’.” Like a hound rising to the scent, Patrick’s sexual antennae reached out to her. She stopped dead and looked into his eyes.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked, with her hand on the back of the chair.
He shook his head. “I’m alone.”
“I’m Evgenia,” she said, in a voice like slow-poured cream, as electricity flickered between them. “And who are you?”
They didn’t bother with lunch after all. They slipped out of the beach club and into his Porsche and to a little pied-à-terre he kept in the hills above town for just such moments as this. Electricity played no part in their “lovemaking.” An earthier word would have been more suitable for their mating, for their hungry cries and her passionate screams. Patrick had never had a woman like her; Evgenia had never had a man like him. And she wanted to keep him. Forever.
They had been lovers for three months when the plan evolved in the aftermath of their love-play. They were lying on the crumpled sheets, she smoking her everlasting Gitanes filters, he stretched out, arms behind his head, still wet with sweat and sex.
“It’s very simple,” she said in that throaty whisper with an accent that sometimes sounded almost comic in its Russianness, as though she were playing the beautiful spy in a Hollywood spoof. And then she explained how simple it was. Patrick would get his land back and his hotel. She knew this was important to him because he’d told her so, endlessly. She could manipulate Solis; he would do anything at this point, he was so besotted with her. But not for much longer, not when he found out, as he would soon, that she had been selling jewels and cars and furs and stashing the money. “I’ll just have to get rid of Solis,” she said.
Patrick laughed, not taking her seriously. She’d thought it all out, though. She and Solis would go for a late-evening cruise along the coast, as they often did. The Agamemnon crew always went to their own quarters early. Solis liked to be left alone with her on deck. She would choose a moonless night, perhaps lure him to the rail—to look at the dolphins, she’d say. She’d make sure he drank a lot, add a little extra something to his drink…he was an old man, and even though he was big, she was stronger, and besides she’d catch him off guard. Just one big push and it would be over. And she would be free. It would be easy.
“And then,” she said, crouching over Patrick and staring into his eyes, “you will get rid of your wife.”
Shocked out of this dream of lust and money, Patrick paced the floor, naked and angry, demanding to know what kind of creature she was, how could she even think of such a thing. He would divorce Lola, never kill her.
But Evgenia had learned long ago always to watch her back. “Look at it from my point of view, darling Patrick,” she coaxed. “If I run off with you, I’ll get nothing. And trust me, darling, I’m not a woman who can be poor. I have to kill Solis.”
He groaned and she pushed him away. “Don’t pretend, we’re alike, you and I, Patrick,” she said. “Think about this. I leave Solis, I have no money. You divorce Lola, it’ll take years in the courts and she’ll take you to the cleaners. We would be poor, Patrick. And how long do you suppose our ‘love’ would last then? A year, six months, a week?”
He buried his face in the pillow and she knelt to whisper in his ear.
“It’s time to get real, sweetheart. If I kill Solis, you’ll be the only one who knows about it. Someday, who knows, maybe you’ll get jealous. We’ll have a fight and you’ll tell the police what I did. You’ll accuse me of murder. Hah! I’m not stupid enough to allow that, my darling Patrick. Oh no, it’s tit for tat. I kill, you kill. I can never tell on you, you can never tell on me. And we get all the money.”
She lay next to him, stroking his back, dropping soft wet kisses on the muscles of his shoulders. “Right, Patrick?”
“I can’t do it.”
She flung herself from the bed and began throwing on her clothes. “If you think I’m going to waste my life being a married man’s mistress, Patrick, then you are mistaken.”
She paused at the door, looked back at him, eyes burning. “You’ll never see me again.”
Patrick thought fleetingly of Lola. “I’ll think about it,” he agreed, stalling for time. He couldn’t bear to lose Evgenia. She had him under her spell, the way certain women have with men from the beginning of time. He belonged to her.