The Greek Pimp Ch. 05

Cosmo had recharged and was starting to stroke again.

"Yes! Yes, you are bigger! Thicker by far, though the baron reaches as deep."

"You want less of me?"

"Noooo!"

"It wouldn't have mattered if you said yes. Tell, me, my dark little beauty. Am I not a more cruel lover than the baron?" Cosmo needed to be cruel. And this was but a servant. He needed to assert himself as a pimp, to will himself not to care.

"No, in truth, Master, you are not as cruel as the baron."

This took Cosmo aback. It was not what he expected to hear—what he'd wanted to hear. He made some effort to prove that he was.

Later, when Cosmo rejoined the baron, clothed once again in his burgundy silk robe, the baron declared himself very satisfied with Devin and handed the sale money over to Cosmo. Devin wasn't present, and Cosmo regretted that he didn't have the chance to see him again. He offered money for Mustapha, having been pleased with him and assured that the Arab would be too, but the baron said the young Arab wasn't for sale.

The young man, Devin, had to be given up. And where else better than in a lavish environment such as this, with another old man to dote on the youth? Much better than in the clutches of such as As-Shabat. And the money was even better than the Arab had been offering.

He had another bit of a clutchy feeling when Devin so readily had agreed to stay with the baron, but he pushed it out of his mind as he was driven back to the casino in El-Jadida, where he could resume filling the order for Amir al-Shabat—and, hopefully, get back into the in-control mode of the Greek pimp.

* * * *

The first inkling of trouble came to Cosmo as he was sitting in the Abias Club bar waiting for a nearly destitute young Scandinavian gambler to decide whether to take him up on his offer and to meet him here. This would be his fourth young man and would fill out Al-Shabat's order. The other three were on ice aboard the Apyko, with the Nigerian bodyguard babysitting them. The Arab bodyguard was standing near the entrance of the bar.

The bartender and a cocktail hostess were talking near where Cosmo was sitting. He couldn't quite hear them, but when he heard the word "Greek" his ears tuned their way.

"Wondered what happened to him," the cocktail hostess said. "But to be found that way . . . wasn't he a close friend of yours?"

The bartender didn't say anything that Cosmo could hear, but just then his attention went to the door, where two uniformed men were talking to the Arab bodyguard. They were leading him away. Cosmo's survival instincts clicked in. It wouldn't be the bodyguard who had come to the attention of the authorities; it would be him, for some reason. If the authorities were after him, he could count on the bodyguard to cover for a little while—but not for long.

Cosmo turned in his seat to face the bartender, prepared to ask him for clarification of what he and hostess were talking about, but the mere look of fright and then speculation on the man's face when he saw the Greek told Cosmo much of what he needed to know. It was the same bartender who had hooked him up with Devin to begin with.

"Say, aren't you the Greek who—?"

Cosmo was out of his chair and across the room to the entrance in no time flat. He headed for the terrace swimming pool area overlooking the marina. En route to the marina where theApyko was docked, he stopped the cocktail hostess who had been talking with the bartender in the club.

"I overheard you talking about some problem with a colleague," he said, flashing enough Dirham, the currency of Morocco, to loosen her lips.

"Yes. Devin, one of the singers in the Abias Club. A cute young man, but not for me, if you know what I mean. He just disappeared a few days ago. Didn't show up for work. And last night they found him torn up badly in an alley in Casablanca."

"Is he? Did he—?"

"I heard he will live but that he'll be crippled up badly. Too bad. Really cute face and bod, and he sang like an angel."

Cosmo pressed the money into her hand and moved quickly over to the terrace steps down to the marina. But looking down into the marina from there made him pull up short. Uniformed men with submachine guns were walking the three young men he'd already bagged to sell to Al-Shabat and the Nigerian bodyguard off the Apyko.

He drew back from the edge of the terrace. He couldn't be here. The authorities obviously thought he had something to do with Devin being beaten. And of course he did; it wasn't something he could deny. The bartender no doubt was talking to the authorities now and linking him even closer to the platinum blond. Fear for himself plus concern for what had happened to Devin—and the full extent of how Devin had gotten under his skin—washed over Cosmo. He couldn't dwell on any of this just now, though. He had to get on the move.

Passage through the hotel or casino would be unwise, he realized, so he started walking around the edge of the complex. Once in front, he walked farther down the road toward Casablanca and hailed a taxicab to take him into the city.

The man who opened the wooden door at the baron's compound was old and grizzled. It wasn't Mustapha.

"Where is he? Where is the baron?"

The old man obviously didn't understand English. He stood there smiling and looking a bit stupid.

"Baron Henri Bourbon. I must see him."

The name registered and the old man smiled, bowed, and motioned for Cosmo to follow him, which he did. He was led down, not up, this time, into a vaulted, rock walled chamber, leaving Cosmo just inside the door and withdrawing.

It took a few moments for the horror of what Cosmo saw to register. It was some sort of torture chamber—a chamber of sexual BDSM. The baron was there in a black silk cape and nothing else and holding a scourge whip. A young man, covered with red welts, was hanging, naked, from wrist restraints attached to a chain anchored in the ceiling of chamber.

Cosmo gasped when he realized it was Mustapha.

"Well, this is an unexpected pleasure," the baron said, with a smile, when he turned to see Cosmo at the door. "Have you brought me another young man? I hope he is as luscious as Devin. He was delicious. Lasted for hours. I wouldn't have expected he had it in him."

Cosmo could hardly speak he was so shocked and angry. He brushed by the baron and released Mustapha's wrist restraints. The young man fell into his arms.

"You can't do this," he cried out to Henri. "I didn't bring you Devin for you to do this to him. I brought him here to protect him from someone who probably is far less cruel than you are."

"I can't do this? This is Morocco and I am the Baron Henri Bourbon. I can do what I damn well please here."

"I am taking Mustapha away," Cosmo declared as he started half carrying, half dragging the young man toward the entrance to the chamber. The baron made no move to stop him.

"You may try, if you like. I am serious that I would like you to provide me with more young men like Devin, though." Still he made no move to stop the escape.

Cosmo got Mustapha to the door of the compound and through it. He leaned the young man up against the compound wall, whipped off his own jacket, and did what he could to wrap it and tie it with the arms around the young man's hips, to cover his nakedness as well as he was able. "Are you all right? Can you walk? Do you have someplace you can go?"

Mustapha lifted his head and gave Cosmo a peculiar look. "Yes, of course I have somewhere I can go," he mumbled. He scrabbled at the arms of the jacket and managed to pull it off his body and give it back to Cosmo. Then, with a lurch, he turned and stumbled back through the open doorway and into the compound. The wooden door slammed shut, and Cosmo heard the bolt being shot home.

On his way out of the maze of narrow streets from the compound and back into the market area, Cosmo stopped at a tea room and put a telephone call into the police. He told them there was a young man being beaten and gave the address. He didn't connect it with Devin, because he was too connected with that already. He had no idea whether the police would follow up—and he suspected that the baron was quite right and they wouldn't—but it was pretty much all he could do for Mustapha. Obviously, no matter how rough life was with the baron for Mustapha, the young man must believe the alternatives for him were worse.

The guilt was eating at Cosmo. Mustapha had already told Cosmo what the baron was going to do with Devin. Cosmo had, deep inside, suspected it just from the way he'd seen the baron fuck Devin twice. Mustapha had said the baron was more cruel than Cosmo even while Cosmo was trying to regain the hardness required of a pimp.

There was nothing that Cosmo could do for Devin now, though, and Devin had brought some of this on to himself.

Self-preservation was foremost now. Cosmo had been in this business for nearly forty years. He had rarely been in as dangerous a position as he was now, but he was a fighter and a survivor.

As dusk was falling, he took a taxi back to El-Jadida, back to the Mazagan Beach Resort and casino. Once again he worked his way around to the side. The Apyko was still there. A guard was standing on the dock, but all of the lights were out in the yacht. Cosmo would just have to hope and pray that no one was stationed on the yacht. He was still a good swimmer. He'd once been a champion swimmer.

He stripped and slipped into the water of the Mediterranean beyond the reach of the lights from the resort. As silently as he could, he swam to the bow of the boat, facing away from the dock. Using a rope coil hanging over the bow, he pulled himself up onto the deck of the ship. He came around the side of the superstructure and waited for the guard on the dock to look away from the sea and toward the casino. Keeping low, he slipped around to the side against the dock and silently untied the mooring lines. Inside the ship, he found, to his relief, that it was deserted.

He heard the guard yell and start moving down the dock when he flashed on the engines, but he was well away and unaffected by the pursuing burst of submachine gun fire—and out of the harbor and churning the sea—before any further response could be launched.

As he motored the Apyko back toward his safe haven in Limassol, Cyprus, he schemed on where he went from here. Devin was regrettable, but it had been a close thing with him. Cosmo had to realize that the older he got, the more susceptible he was going to be to bonds of affection with young men, now in the golden years that had passed him by. He must either be on greater guard or he must start winding his operations down. He now was on the radar with law enforcement as never before.

He needed to cool his activities in the Mediterranean for a while, perhaps even pull away from the sea. He couldn't see giving up the casino angle, though. It was just too perfect as a source for both needy young hunks and rich men willing to pay for them. But maybe an entirely different venue altogether. Maybe the casino capital of the world—Las Vegas.