Chapter 27: Season 8 - A Conclave of Criminals

Señor Felipe Diaz de Ortega y Cobarrubia, the South American drug dealer or whatever he was, arrived at the hotel the day after I became Katarina’s fiancé. I happened to be on duty at Reception as one of the receptionists had phoned in sick and I, Andre Montesano’s fireman, filled the vacant position. Señor Cobarrubia signed the register and then asked the Senior Receptionist, a very attractive Croatian girl named Sofija, what time dinner was served, but had asked his question in Spanish which wasn’t one of Sofija’s languages.

She looked at him blankly and I intervened, informing him that as a premier guest his dining room would be the Silver Service Restaurant and that dinner was served from 7 pm -10 pm.

His sharp black eyes pierced me. “You are Spanish?”

“Catalan,” I said. For some reason Catalonian and Basque Separatists have a big following in South America, probably a hark back to Simón Bolívar and his fight for independence against Spain.

“Excellent,” he said. “I will need a translator from time to time. I speak no Serbian. My English and French are poor and my Italian non-existent.”

“I do not speak Serbo-Croat but I am fluent in the three other languages you mention, and will be delighted to translate for you when required.” I may have been slightly economical with the truth regarding my fluency in English, but time would tell.

He smiled, something I don’t think he did too often, and then peered at my name tag. “Rafael. Are you always here at the desk?”

“No, Señor. I am filling in just for today. I am a waiter in the Silver Service restaurant where you will have all your meals, and I will be engaged on room service when not on duty at the restaurant.”

He turned to the two men who had followed him in to the hotel lobby through the revolving doors, and rattled something off to them in what was not English, French, or Spanish. I assumed it was some South American Indian language as the two were undoubtedly native Indians, probably from the Amazon jungle. I took them to be Señor Cobarrubia’s body guards although they were not the type of men normally used as body guards. They were short and skinny and looked incongruous in the dark blue suits they wore, but even so there was an intimidating air of menace about them. After listening intently to what their master had said they nodded and then looked at me with hard, unblinking, eyes. Both then smiled at me. One had his teeth filed to points.

“My two men have marked you and will allow you into my suite, which...?”

I interrupted. “Room six six three on the top floor, Don Felipe,” I said and handed him the key that he passed on to the smaller of the two Indians.

“I have a guest arriving in an hour’s time,” he continued. “Please ring when she arrives, and then escort her to my suite.”

“Certainly, Don Felipe. And the name of the lady?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know her name but I do know she is the most expensive piece of ass to be had in this town!” After imparting that interesting snippet of information he and his henchmen took an elevator to the top floor.

It appeared I had struck lucky. One of the main men at the forthcoming meeting wanted me as his translator. Perhaps I wouldn’t need the recording device. Then the cold hand of reality and fear gripped me. If I was to become privy to all his plans then I would know too much and could expect an early death. I re-thought it out; I was only to be his translator when it came to matters concerning the hotel. That meant I would be part of his entourage at times, giving me a better chance of getting the listening device into the meeting room, which I saw I from the hotel register was to be room 666. An omen perhaps?

Señor Cobarrubia’s guest arrived an hour later. She was a big bosomed platinum blonde who walked with her hips gyrating like a cement mixer on full throttle. I estimated her age to be near thirty and she looked to have been around the block a few times. If she was the most expensive piece of ass in Podgorica, as Señor Cobarrubia had so succinctly put it, I wouldn’t fancy spending a night with the cheapest. However, there was a certain blowsy charm about her. The dress she was nearly wearing covered about twenty five percent of her bosom and a similar percentage of leg, and was the same colour as the hair piled on her head like a truncated Tower of Pisa. Her high heels were more like stilts; no wonder she swayed when she walked, it was probably much windier up at her elevation. She spoke in Serbo-Croat, which Sofija translated for me into French.

“She’s the hooker for the Dago!”

“Not the sort of language we use at the Hotel Josip Broz Tito to describe our guests, Sofija,” I said in mock severity.

Sofija laughed and stuck her tongue out at me. I think she fancied me and I probably could have had her, but I was in love, and no other female measured up to, or even came anywhere near, to my beloved Katarina.

I rang room 663 and informed Señor Cobarrubia his guest had arrived and I would be escorting her straightway up to his suite. He gave a grunt that I translated as, ‘thank you, Rafael’.

I ushered the blonde whore towards the elevator. “What’s your name?” I said in English, the most widely spoken foreign language in Montenegro.

“Sadie,” she replied, and then said something in Serbo -Croat. I explained, in English, that I did not speak her mother tongue and then asked her, in Spanish, if she spoke any Spanish. She started at me in incomprehension. I sighed; this was going to be difficult. Surely Señor Cobarrubia wouldn’t have me standing alongside to translate while he was porking his guest? How embarrassing that would be; well, it would be for me. Sadie the Shady Lady and Señor Cobarrubia may be used to performing in front of an audience.

The taller of the two Indians was waiting outside the door of room 663. He gave a full on smile, showing his filed teeth when seeing Sadie. I could see Sadie was impressed, or it might have been terrified. She was certainly surprised. The Indian opened the door and I entered with Sadie, the Indian following close behind her.

Señor Cobarrubia was seated at a table that had packets of white powder on it.

He indicated the table. “Help yourself, Rafael,” he said in Spanish.

“I’m on duty, Don Felipe.”

“Yes, of course. Perhaps when you finish work?” He got up from the table. “Tell this bimbo to go into the master bedroom and remove whatever underwear she is wearing. That includes garter belt, stockings, and especially those lethal heels. She is to lay on the bed, on her back, with her dress pulled up above her waist and her legs wide open.” I passed on the message, in English, and Sadie nodded and disappeared into the room.

“That’s all, Rafael. We will take it from here.” Don Felipe said.

I mentally shrugged. What was the point of me being a translator if I wasn’t to be in the room to translate? The Don must have noticed my bafflement.

“From now on the puta will know full well what I want her to do. Nature has its own methods of getting a message understood.”

Five hours later I was tending bar in the main lounge, which opens onto the lobby, when I saw Sadie exiting the elevator. She had some difficulty walking, as if every footstep was painful. I handed my bartending duties to another and went to help her. She looked as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards and then forwards. Her once immaculate styled coiffure now fell about her face and shoulders in a tangled mess, with what appeared to be gobbets of semen among the twisted tresses. Her lipstick was smeared, her dress was ripped, and she could hardly stand. I found her a chair and she collapsed gratefully on to the seat, and then gave a moan of agony. I brought her a cushion and she thanked me, her eyes brimming with tears.

“I have never been ridden so hard, so viciously, and for so long, as I have been today,” she said, near to sobbing.

“I wouldn’t have thought Don Felipe would be such a violent man...”

“Not him. He just watched. It was them two Indian savages. I have handled five men at a time, and often have had all my holes filled at the same time, but those two...” She said something in Serbo Croat I imagined was something no decent girl should say, “did things to me that no man has ever done before. I had both their dicks in my ass at the same time,” she patted the cushion she was sat on, “thank God for this. And then I had both their dicks in my pussy at the same time. I am so sore front and back I won’t be able to work for days.” She pulled down a strap of her ripped dress exposing teeth marks on her left breast. “I’ve got bites in places where no girl should ever have them,” she complained, “and they ain’t love bites!”

She made to stand up but I stopped her. “I’ll get you a taxi. Stay seated until it arrives. Would you like something to drink while you wait?”

“Water will be fine. God knows what was in the drinks they poured down my throat, and then in my pussy and ass. The bastards lapped it out like a pair of tigers.”

I asked Sofija to ring for a taxi while I got a bottle of Vichy water and a glass from the bar. When I got back to Sadie she was looking slightly better. She had reapplied her lipstick and put her hair into a pony tail. She gulped the water straight from the bottle and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“I’ve been gang banged by Bosniaks, raped by Croats, and have pulled trainloads of Serbs, but those bloody Indios were something else. Mind you,” she said, a smile on her face, “with the amount of money I got paid I won’t have to work for a week or more.”

The taxi arrived and I escorted Sadie to the cab and helped into the rear.

“Thank you, Rafael,” she said giving me a full wattage smile. “If you want a freebie any time let me know. You’ve been really kind, and girls like me don’t get treated kindly very often. In fact this is the first time for me,” she paused, “and hopefully the last time I will be the meat in an Amazonian Indian sandwich!”

I waved as the cab drew away, feeling sorry for Sadie having to earn her money in such a manner and grateful that Katarina had managed to escape the seedier side of escorting.

Next morning the Albanian leader of a gang associated with the Bulbul crime syndicate arrived at the hotel.He had brought his own whore, or rather whores, as there were two of them. Of course I might have been maligning the two buxom blondes. They could have been his sisters, but I think not, unless he was very much attached to his sisters, so attached he had his left hand up one’s skirt and his right hand fondling the breasts of the other. This was when he booked in at the Reception desk (he had removed his hand from the cleavage of his ‘sister’ before signing the register). In his defence, I noted that the skirts worn by the girls were micro short and the blouses low cut, and both girls were extremely voluptuous, thus more of their flesh was on display than was concealed. Middle Eastern, South American, and Asian men seem to be attracted to this type of female. There can’t be that many natural blondes in the Balkans so I assumed they, like Sadie the Shady Lady, were suicide blondes. (‘Dyed by theirown hand!’)

The Albanian gang leader, Elion Krasniqi, spoke Serbo-Croat and had no difficulty making himself understood at reception when he arrived. I was surprised he had no bodyguards with him. Actually if he, a gang leader, was alive when so many of his ilk were not it indicated Elion Krasniqi was not just a horn dog but possessed the brains and the luck to survive where his body guards hadn’t. However, that is the job of a body guard; to take one, not for the team but rather for the team leader. Krasniqi informed Sofija at reception he had contacted a local security firm to supply him with a squad of bodyguards and they would be arriving within the hour.

I managed to hide my surprise when the four hired goons entered the lobby; Pierre Dubois was one of the four. He made no sign he knew me; frozen faced would be the adjective to use. All four men had the same look and appearance; pugnacious faces, lantern jaws, stolid, solid, stocky built men with bulges under their left armpits.

All that was missing from the convocation of criminality was the Chinese connection, and they arrived shortly after the Albanian’s hired bodyguards. This time I allowed my surprise to show when I saw ‘Susie Wong’ among the entourage of the Chinese cultural attaché.

I had leaned a phrase in Mandarin that I hoped would endear me to the latest visitors. “Welcome to the Hotel Josip Broz Tito, Your Excellency,” I said in what I hoped was flawless Mandarin. It probably wasn’t as I had learned the phrase phonetically from a ‘Learn Mandarin in a day’ YouTube video clip, but the Chinese are expert at being inscrutable and the cultural attaché merely bowed and replied in what I took to be the same language, but it might have been Cantonese. That was another video clip on YouTube I could have added to my linguistic repertoire. I hadn’t been too sure how one addressed a cultural attaché but surmised he would have a high opinion of himself, like most bureaucratic officials, and ‘His Excellency’ gave the right degree of deference. I also knew the Chinese were very aware of rank in their society and I supposed he would be some way up the hierarchical tree both in the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society. In any event, it’s never a bad ploy to brown nose one’s superiors.