The James Bond Anthology

Tiffy picked up the note. She said, ‘Thanks, Mister. You’d be surprised what I’m going to spend your money on.’ She gave him a long, hard look and turned on her heel.

Scaramanga shrugged. He reached for a bottle of beer and a glass and both men poured and drank. Scaramanga took out an expensive cigar case, selected a pencil-thin cheroot and lit it with a match. He let the smoke dribble out between his lips and inhaled the thin stream up his nostrils. He did this several times with the same mouthful of smoke until the smoke was dissipated. All the while he stared across the table at Bond, seeming to weigh up something in his mind. He said, ‘Care to earn yourself a grand – a thousand bucks?’

Bond said, ‘Possibly.’ He paused and added, ‘Probably.’ What he meant was, ‘Of course! If it means staying close to you, my friend.’

Scaramanga smoked a while in silence. A car stopped outside and two laughing men came quickly up the steps. When they came through the bead curtains, working-class Jamaicans, they stopped laughing and went quietly over to the counter and began whispering to Tiffy. Then they both slapped a pound note on the counter and, making a wide detour away from the white men, disappeared through the curtains at the back of the room. Their laughter began again as Bond heard their footsteps on the stairs.

Scaramanga hadn’t taken his eyes from Bond’s face. Now he said, keeping his voice low, ‘I got myself a problem. Some partners of mine, they’ve taken an interest in this Negril development. Far end of the property. Place called Bloody Bay. Know it?’

‘I’ve seen it on the map. Just short of Green Island Harbour.’

‘Right. So I’ve got some shares in the business. So we start building a hotel and get the first storey finished and the main living-rooms and restaurant and so on. So then the tourist boom slackens off – Americans get frightened of being so close to Cuba or some such crap. And the banks get difficult and money begins to run short. Follow me?’

‘So you’re a stale bull of the place?’

‘Right. So I came over a few days ago and I’m staying at the Thunderbird and I’ve got a half-dozen of the main stockholders to fly in for a meeting on the spot. Sort of look the place over and get our heads together and figure what to do next. Now, I want to give these guys a good time so I’ve got a smart combo over from Kingston, calypso singers, limbo, plenty of girls – all that jazz. And there’s swimming and one of the features of the place is a small-scale railway that used to handle the sugar cane. Runs to Green Island Harbour where I gotta forty-foot Chris-Craft Roamer. Deep-sea fishing. That’ll be another outing. Get me? Give the fellers a real good time.’

‘So that they’ll get all enthusiastic and buy out your share of the stock?’

Scaramanga frowned angrily. ‘I’m not paying you a grand to get the wrong ideas. Or any ideas for the matter of that.’

‘What for then?’

For a moment or two Scaramanga went through his smoking routine, the little pillars of smoke vanishing again and again into the black nostrils. It seemed to calm him. His forehead cleared. He said, ‘Some of these men are kind of rough. We’re all stockholders, of course, but that don’t necessarily mean we’re friends. Understand? I’ll be wanting to hold some meetings, private meetings, with mebbe only two or three guys at a time, sort of sounding out the different interests. Could be that some of the other guys, the ones not invited to a particular meeting, might get it into their heads to bug a meeting or try and get wise to what goes on in one way or another. So it jes’ occurs to me that you being live to security and such, that you could act as a kind of guard at these meetings, clean the room for mikes, stay outside the door and see that no one comes nosing around, see that when I want to be private I git private. D’you get the photo?’

Bond had to laugh. He said, ‘So you want to hire me as a kind of personal bodyguard. Is that it?’

The frown was back. ‘And what’s so funny about that, Mister? It’s good money, ain’t it? Three, mebbe four days in a luxury joint like the Thunderbird. A thousand bucks at the end of it? What’s so screwy about that proposition, eh?’ Scaramanga mashed out the butt of his cigar against the underside of the table. A shower of sparks fell. He let them lie.