Open Sesame by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Format: epub

‘So,’ said the man behind the desk, ‘you come to me and you say, We kill your buddy the little bear, we’re terribly sorry, we won’t do it again. Is that it?’

Aziz nodded. Behind him, seventy-six feet shuffled nerv­ously. ‘It was an accident, really,’ he said. ‘Well, not an accident as such, more a, what’s the word, misunderstanding.’ He remembered a good phrase from one of his juvenile court appearances. ‘A tragic fusion of coincidence, mistaken iden­tity and good intentions gone dreadfully awry,’ he recited. On second thoughts, he wished he hadn’t; it hadn’t worked the first time, mainly because the coincidence had been the night watch coming down the alley at precisely the moment he was leaving the warehouse, the mistaken identity had been him thinking they weren’t the watch, and the good intention had been his intention to escape by climbing over the wall into what turned out to be the Khalifs pedigree snake collection.

‘Sure,’ grunted the man behind the desk. ‘I believe you. So when the Momma Bear and the Baby Bear they come to me and say, Padrone, give us justice, I gotta tell them it was all a mistake and the guys are terribly sorry. Do you take me for a fool, or what? Rocco, get them outa my sight.’

Behind him, Aziz could hear footsteps, and metallic grating noises. Not for the first time, he sincerely wished he could have had his brain removed when he was twelve. ‘Look...’ he stuttered.

And then the man behind the desk did a strange thing. He smiled. ‘On the other hand,’ he said. He didn’t finish the sentence, but the movement noises in the background stopped as abruptly as if a tape had been switched off.

‘Yes?’ Aziz croaked.

‘Hey.’ The man spread his arms. ‘Everybody makes mis­takes. I made a mistake, once,’ he added. ‘And I’m sure that if I was to put in a good word for you with the widow bear and the orphan bear—’

‘Yes?’

‘And you guys sign a legally binding contract to cut them in on, say, ninety per cent of everything you make for the next forty years—’

‘Yes?’

‘Plus a small contribution, say five per cent, to the Arabian Nights Moonshine Coach Club social fund—’

‘Yes?’

The man shrugged. It was an eloquent gesture. Louder and clearer than fifty-foot neon letters against a black background it said THIS COMMITS ME TO NOTHING BUT SO WHAT? ‘Then,’ he said, ‘you guys gonna be so grateful to me, you might consider doing me a small favour.’

‘Anything you say,’ Aziz replied, in a voice so small that a bat would need a hearing aid to hear it. ‘Padrone,’ he added.

‘That’s great,’ said the man. ‘Now, then. I gonna tell you a story.’

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