Pit-Bull holiday.
One day we got a call from Andreas, an acquaintance in Germany, a friend of a friend, who was trying to start a holiday business. He had visited us earlier in the year and had made detailed maps to the three houses that made up our rental empire so that clients could find the properties. He made his first and only booking for one of our houses saying he had a very important client. In fact, so important was this client that he asked us to be very discrete about the booking and to be at the house when he arrived. That was alright with us as we prided ourselves on having personal contact with our clients and in any case, as we pointed out to him, it would be a bit difficult for the client to get in without a key. Sandy and I went to the house at the appointed hour and waited for a long time for the client. We were getting ready to give up and go home when a large Mercedes with tinted windows, totally unsuitable for the lanes of Mallorca, glided into the drive and stopped about ten meters from where we were standing.
This arrival was unlike our regular clients who were generally unpretentious, we wondered if the occupants of the car were possibly lost and looking for directions. The driver’s door opened, and a medium height muscular looking man stepped out. The image brought back a chill memory of a time I was sitting in a bar in Djibouti. A truckload of hard-faced French Foreign Legion turned up interrupting my quiet drink, only instead of a kepi with a neck sun flap and desert combat uniform, this guy was wearing a grey Gucci suit, Ray-Bans and wasn’t carrying a firearm, at least not one that I could see.
He surveyed the area, slowly removed his sun shades and held us in a cold stare. He leaned back and opened the rear passenger door from where emerged a silver grey, not too friendly looking, Pit-Bull. The dog first circled us menacingly and then came in for a closer sniff around our ankles. The suit walked over and asked who we were, which I thought was a bit of a cheek as he was on our property so to speak, however, I didn’t feel inclined to draw this technicality to his attention. Satisfied with our response, he walked back to the car and opened the other passenger door. Out of the car came a much larger man reminiscent of the bullion dealer Goldfinger from the Bond film of the same name, it was clear now that the suit was the minder. The minder’s boss came over to us, he surveyed the old house and the rows of vines surrounding it. He looked down the hill that sloped towards the distant village of Cas Concos. The fields of almond trees were speckled with sheep grazing under a clear azure blue sky, their metal neck bells clanking softly as they stared into infinity chewing on dried grass; a picture of pastoral tranquillity, an idyllic place to relax, reflect and take stock of one’s life. Goldfinger looked back at the two of us.
“Where are the girls?”.
“Um!” I looked at Sandy, no help there. I looked back at the man, he was serious.
The Pit-Bull and the minder looked impatiently to me for an answer to the boss’s question.
“Um, Ah! We don’t do girls.” I replied weakly.
“No girls,” said the boss.
With a cringe, as if I had just failed some test, I looked at the two of them and then to escape their cold gaze lowered my head and directed my answer to the dog. I shook my head in reply.
“No, no girls”.
The two men looked at each other, then turned and walk away, just as they were about to get into the car.
“What about the deposit?”
I turned to look at Sandy in disbelief, was she crazy!
They slowly turned back toward us.
“What deposit?” the boss growled at her. I was about to say the same thing when she continued.
“We only took this booking because Andreas said you urgently needed a place at short notice. We normally take a deposit of twenty per cent to secure the booking. In this case, there wasn’t time for a transfer, Andreas said you would pay cash on arrival. If you are not going to stay here, we at least need the deposit for getting the place ready and to cover the loss of business because we’ve told people that the house is booked.”
Goldfinger asked how much it was. When Sandy told him, he whispered an instruction to his subordinate who nodded in acknowledgement. The minder, walked back towards us slipping his right hand across his chest inside his jacket just below his left shoulder. This didn’t look good.
Stopping a few feet in front of us he slowly withdrew his hand from under his jacket to reveal a black wallet, opened it and peeled off a number of high denomination Peseta notes. As a matter of goodwill, we gave him directions to a hotel owned by a Mallorcan lady in Cala D’or who accepted animals, and assured him that she would take all three of them. Later we phoned Andreas and asked him what the hell he was up to, we were running a holiday business, not a brothel. It seemed the client had just completed a prison sentence and wanted to get out of Germany for a while. Andreas was only too willing to get him out of his office and out of the country as soon as possible, and we ended up being the fortunate ones to get the booking.