Free Hot Ice by Gregg Loomis Page A

as to height. Despite the heat, he wore a suit of some rough black material. There was no sign he was uncomfortable in the temperature, no sweat on his black face, no dampness under the arms of his suit. Jason recalled the stories of Haiti’s zombies—men and women not quite dead but not alive, either.
    “Oh, how careless of me,” Momma chortled. “This is Semedi, my friend and driver.” She turned to Maria. “You won’t believe this, but I never learned to drive.”
    More likely, she had never submitted to the scrutiny of identification that went with a driver’s-license application.
    Driver and bodyguard, Jason guessed. But he said, “Semedi? That’s patois for Saturday, right?”
    “Also the name of one of our loa , or voodoo spirits,” Momma added.
    “The loa of death, as I recall,” Jason added.
    If Semedi understood any of the conversation, he gave no sign.
    Momma sat on—or, rather, filled—one of the chairs, fanning herself with her hand.
    Jason sat across the table from her as Maria slid into the remaining seat.
    “OK,” Jason began, “to what do I owe the honor of the first visit you’ve ever made to my home—any home?”
    Although speaking to him, Momma’s eyes were searching the landscape, perhaps looking for long-range spyware. “Yesterday morning I received a call from a policeman in Iceland.”
    Jason knew she wanted him to ask a question, but he remained silent.
    “You remember Boris Karloff?” Momma asked, relevant to nothing Jason could think of.
    What was this, some trivia contest? “Sure. Stage actor turned to movies in the late thirties, did a number of Frankenstein films. Even had a TV show in the fifties.”
    Jason swallowed his curiosity. Damned if he’d play one of Momma’s games.
    She shook her head, tinkling long, drooping beaded earrings. “Not the same. He was one of our—ah—contractors. Little guy, always wore a hat of some sort. I think he was Russian, Eastern European, something like that. You were”—she shot a glance at Maria—“You were investigating a fraudulent scheme by a consortium of Russians. Boris was the one who fingered, pointed out, the head guy.”
    Jason recalled now. An in-and-out hit job. Boris had been a minor but important player, a gnomelike little man who had put a face with a name that, left alone, would have made Bernie Madoff’s escapades seem penny-ante, bankrupting several European financial institutions and, quite likely, precipitating a panic not seen since the Wall Street crash of 1929. The little guy always wore some type of head covering—to cover pointed, elflike ears? At the time, he had seemed remarkable only because few who worked for Narcom ever met others who did.
    “He was so thrilled to have worked with one of our major contractors,” Momma added.
    Jason put out a hand: stop. “ Was a major contractor. I said the job in Africa was my last, and I meant it.” He shot a quick look at Maria and was rewarded by the faint hint of a smile.
    Momma drained the last of the wine and looked around hopefully. Gianna knew when not to be available. She set the glass down on the table. “That was truly some of the best I’ve ever had, particularly an Italian white.”
    “Boris,” Jason said, “you came here about Boris.”
    Momma shrugged, a small matter. “It seems he got himself hurt in Iceland, shot, actually, doing a bit of investigative work. He won’t tell the local police anything but keeps asking for you. Narcom’s number was the only one he had.”
    “Me?” Jason was truly surprised. “Why me?”
    “As I said, he was thrilled to work with you. I suspect yours was the only name he had of anyone connected with the company.”
    Jason asked, “So, what does all this have to do with me? I’m retired, remember?”
    It was his turn to view a huge smile as Momma reached across the table to pat his arm. “Of course you are, dear! Having met Maria now, I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave her or this marvelous