Free Maxie’s Demon by Michael Scott Rohan Page A

cutlass slung across his back, kicked the sack gently. ‘All dis shit,’ he grunted Germanically, with an angelic smile. ‘All dose bucks. All for you, Maxie. Ain’tcha de lucky bastard?’
    ‘Wow,’ Isaid, hoping the rictus on my face lookedlike a delighted smile. ‘But look, guys, I mean I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, and gosh, I mean I really appreciate – but me and horse, I mean I never – it just doesn’t agree with me – and this much, getting rid of it – I wouldn’t know how – and anyhow,’ I added, encouraged by the lack of daggers at my throat, ‘I – don’t really approve of the hard stuff. At all. I mean hardly.Not at all,’ I added firmly.
    A stunning blow struck me between the shoulder blades. So this was death?
    ‘
Hey!
Dat be truth!’
    ‘Arrr! Dead right, by Jenny’s—’
    ‘This is a
hidalgo
, he has principles!
Viva el jefe!
’
    ‘Right on, Maxie!’ Somebody kicked the sack, and about fifty very big ones sprayed expensively across the muck. I winced.
    More thumps, with roars of idiot enthusiasm. ‘Sure, that stuff’spoison!’
    ‘Aye! Pitch it i’ the tide, me hearties!’ They fell on it with howls of moral outrage, ripping the sack apart, punting the packets out into the blackness, whacking them away with their swords like baseball bats, trailing snowy-white comets across the marsh. There were going to be some very happy frogs round here awhile, or maybe they’d just croak.
    Whatever I thought about hard drugs,the sight of so much raw money flying away caused me acute physical agony, but I wasn’t about to try stopping them any more than I would a runaway bulldozer. I hugged the envelope tight to me.
    ‘Aclean lad’ee be, Maxie!’ one shouted.
    ‘Sure, no way dat a real man make his pile!’ cried another. ‘Come avay vith us, baby!’
    ‘
Si, como no?
’ laughed one of the women. ‘Come away this night, now, shareour roving fortunes!’
    I don’t know what sort of sound I made, but it started out as ‘
What?
’
    ‘Arr!’ roared one of them. ‘Away, sail away, sling yer hook for a free life—’
    ‘De vind blowing in your hair—’
    ‘A girl on your arm—’
    ‘
Due fanciulle!
Every day a new one! Every day another place, another story! And a mountain of plunder! Yours to command! Yours if you’re our friend!’
    ‘Our brother! Joinus!’
    ‘Our señor!’ This was a woman, wrapping herself around my arm. ‘Join us! Sail with us! You are of noble blood – lead us, and we shall follow!’
    ‘Command us! Join us! We are your strong right arm!’
    I carefully lowered my foot into a new patch of mire, trying not to inhale too deeply. With all this dope flying around I must have got a sniff of it. My sight seemed to be going blurry. Leadthem? I couldn’t even count them. About six I could recognise, including the women, no mistaking
them
; but there had to be two more, maybe three, because there was always a shifting little knot of them out of sight at the back. It was hard to tell; they buzzed about like hornets. And you couldn’t tell by their voices; one woman had a Spanish accent, another something like Italian, there was theSchool of Schwarzenegger character, but they seemed to come and go.
    ‘Nowjus’ a moment here!’ I managed. ‘What’s this noble crap? How’d you – I mean, who says so, anyhow? And what do you want me for?’
    ‘You need friend, man!’ said one, in a conspiratorial hiss. ‘Friend who’ll help you get your dues, get back all the world’s taken from you—’
    ‘
Si, si!
Friends powerful and cunning and strong, anassociation of friends who will smooth your passage to riches and position—’
    I managed to pin down that voice, a curly-haired creature wearing what was either about twenty lire’s worth of rags or something straight off the Milan catwalk. ‘Look, you’re not anything to do with this Lodge P2 or something, are you? ’Cause if it’s Italian politics I don’t want to know,