Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (16 page)

“Yeah, me,” he says. “Christ, I never personally had anybody taken out in fifteen years. I’d moved on from that level. Investments, loans, take-overs, stocks and bonds was what I’d moved into. They never even asked me what I was doing, only twice a year. They just gave me the money and I put it to work. I had forty guys working for me. Graduates, most of them; accountants, lawyers, guys with degrees in Business Management. I had ’em all. Then this messy stuff flew up and they needed somebody to be in the papers and on T.V. all the time. But this time they figure some guy off the street ain’t good enough, it’s got to be somebody heavy. I get wind of all this from a broad who is no longer in the land of the living owing to the nature of the information she imparts. But that’s by the by. What I do is I decide to beat the lousy bastards to it by going through various highly sensitive channels that by-passed all sorts of people and led to me doing some kind of deal where I named some really big ones in return for protection like you never seen, a passage so cast-iron Martin Bormann could have used it. I mean the guys I’m with, well, I don’t have to tell you the guarantees’d have to be good before I talked about them to anybody. But it’s very funny, it really is. The guy I’ve got to who, believe me, has taken a lot of getting to, the guy I’m going to do all the talking to, he’s on the payroll too. I find out because I have a piece of luck. This guy has been
playing me along to reassure me before the guys take me out, so I’m under no kind of surveillance. And it’s no hassle to get my ass set down over here.”

I take another sip of my drink.

“Yeah, me,” he says. “Me they wanted to fix.”

He shakes his head.

“Well, that’s what you get with your crowd of mechanics,” I tell him. “You’re not safe unless you’re handing out songs for the glee club.”

D’Antoni just continues taking in the view.

“Still, at least I get my money stashed,” he says. “At least I can get to that. Plus what I took out. I got no worries.”

I smile.

“Only every morning when you wake up, wondering whether you’re still alive.”

D’Antoni looks at me.

“When I’m out of here, no way, no way, where I’m going.”

I shrug.

“In the movies I’ve seen, they always catch up with you, even if it’s twenty years later, and you’re digging your vegetable garden.”

“Listen, I told you. Not me. Not this guy. All right?”

I shrug again.

“You know who you’re dealing with,” I say to him.

To that, there is no answer from D’Antoni. He looks from side to side, then he stands up and shouts at the villa.

“Hey!” he shouts.

There is only the echo from the mountains.

“Wally!”

Wally appears at the corner.

“How long’s that food going to be coming?” D’Antoni shouts.

“Couple of seconds. I was just laying the table in the arbor, round here.”

“Then lay it again, only inside.”

“Yes, Mr. D’Antoni,” Wally says, and flashes off.

D’Antoni turns round and sees that I’m looking at him.

“It’s the flies,” he says. “The way they come around, crapping all over your food.”

I finish my drink and stand up and walk past him, to the villa.

Chapter Nine

D’A
NTONI
’
S RIGHT
. After he’s eaten, he’s much better, by his standards. He’s smiling all the time and occasionally cracking jokes that are about as funny as him being sick into the pool.

I pour myself some more tea.

“What time does the paper lad come with the
Express
, Wally?” I say to him.

Wally shows his appreciation of my funny joke.

“I usually pick up the week’s ration when I go into Palma,” Wally says.

“Just wondered how the Spurs got on,” I say to him.

“Yeah,” Wally says, grinning at me and D’Antoni.

“More coffee,” D’Antoni says to him.

Wally picks up the coffee pot and makes for the kitchen but before he’s a yard away from the table, D’Antoni says: “So where’s the broad? The one with the tits and the black black hair, if you get my meaning.”

Wally turns round but he doesn’t stop moving.

“Tina? Oh, she’s about somewhere. If I know her she’d be in the bath.”

“She’s just been in the pool.”

“Yeah, well, you know women.”

D’Antoni laughs his laugh and Wally disappears into kitchen.

The dining room is slightly smaller than the other rooms in the villa, which makes it not quite as big as the Savoy Grill. It has the same kind of carpets on the walls as all the other rooms and the arrangement is beginning to make me feel like something out of Alice in Wonderland.

“Well,” D’Antoni says, wiping his mouth with a napkin, “at least we now got some ass with which to while away the hours.”

“You think so,” I say to him.

“That’s what I think,” D’Antoni says. “No problem with that one.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe. Listen, I seen broads like that before. At that age? They know how to turn more tricks than a forty-year-old hooker, and enthusiastic with it. We would get broads like that anytime, to entertain associates, and younger. Once, I saw these two ten-year-olds, a boy, a girl, they—”

“Yes,” I tell him. “I seen things like that. They make me throw up.”

“You’re in a minority. Big market in that kind of thing. Lot of people pay big money for it.”

“I know.” I pour some more tea. “I also heard what happens to some of the kids that took part, to protect some of the senior citizens involved.”

“Yeah,” D’Antoni says. “Well, those things have to be taken care of.”

“Not by me they don’t.”

“You think I have? Personally? I never had nothing to do with that side of the operation. I just saw some things, now and then.”

“Well, on my firm, we don’t have that kind of an operation.”

“Yeah?” D’Antoni says. “I must know the Fletchers better than you do.”

“There’s nothing I don’t know about the firm.”

D’Antoni laughs.

“You should see some of the movies they ship over.”

“I don’t see every movie the firm makes.”

“That’s what I mean,” D’Antoni says. “Compared to me, you’re first grade. I knew where every cent I handled was buried. You’re supposed to be their number one man and you don’t even know the kind of movies you’re making.”

I don’t say anything.

“A joke,” D’Antoni says. “Berll could use you.”

“Well,” I say to him, “at least I still work for my firm. They haven’t decided to give me a free transfer.”

“Comes the day they need to, they will,” D’Antoni says. “It’s the same the world over.”

There’s no arguing with that, and I’m not going to give D’Antoni the satisfaction of giving him one. Instead I get up and walk away from the table and into the kitchen where Wally has started the washing up. I light a cigarette and watch him for a while. Wally doesn’t turn round. He just gets on with the dishes, like a woman not speaking in the course of a barney.

Eventually Wally says: “She turned out just like her old lady, that’s what she done.” He puts the last plate in the drainer and unties his apron. “The way she goes on you think she’d been mixing with our sort all her bleeding life.” He folds the apron up and lays it on the work surface.

“You’re out of touch, Wally,” I tell him. “Stuck out here in the wilderness.”

“I’ll be in touch with her when I see her.”

“Oh, leave her alone. You’re like an old woman.”

A voice behind me says: “You should be very happy, then; old man, old woman. Just get the banns read.”

I turn round and Tina’s standing in the doorway and the novelty is she’s wearing some clothes. Only a bikini, but for her it’s some kind of breakthrough.

Wally begins marching over to her.

“Leave it out,” she says, “I’ve heard it all before.”

Wally keeps on going but Tina ducks round him and makes for the fridge. “What’s for breakfast?” she says.

“Listen,” Wally begins, but I cut him short.

“Yeah, leave it out, Wally. We know what you’re going to say.”

Wally lowers his voice and says:

“Listen, Jack, I overheard what he was on about through there. Fuck me, how’d you feel, if it was your daughter was being discussed like that? Eh?”

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “She’ll be looked after.”

“You mean that?”

Tina’s crouching down and looking in the fridge.

“I can look after myself, thanks,” she says.

“You just keep out of his way,” Wally says. “He don’t need no provoking.”

“Who don’t?”

Now it’s D’Antoni’s turn to appear in the doorway. He’s looking at Tina’s arse as she’s bent by the fridge.

“I said who don’t?” he says.

Wally doesn’t say anything. D’Antoni doesn’t take his eyes off Tina, and even when she stands up and turns to face us his gaze stays riveted on the same level of her body.

“You going to cook my breakfast, then?” Tina says to Wally.

“Cook your own bleeding breakfast,” Wally says.

“I’ll cook your breakfast anytime, baby,” D’Antoni says.

“No thanks,” says Tina. “I like my eggs hard.”

Later on I’m sitting out on the patio under a Cinzano-style umbrella, wondering how the fuck I’m going to stop going barmy during the next three days, when Wally comes funnelling out of the villa and says to me: “He’s acting up again.”

“What?”

“D’Antoni. He says he wants you inside.”

“What for?”

“I dunno. In case, he says.”

“Tell him to fuck off.”

“He says if there’s anybody around looking for him and they see this place is inhabited they’ll just naturally investigate.”

“He should have thought of that this morning when he was puking in the pool.”

“Jack—”

“Tell him to fuck off.”

“Jack—”

I close my eyes. Eventually Wally goes back into the villa. A moment or so later D’Antoni’s voice comes drifting out of the villa.

“Carter!”

My eyes remain shut.

“Carter.”

“Fuck off.”

There’s a silence. The next time D’Antoni speaks his voice is closer. About six inches from my left ear.

“Listen, you fucking creep,” he says. “If there’s anybody comes along out there they’re going to know somebody’s here.”

“And if they’re as thorough as they’re supposed to be and the place looks as if it’s empty and shut up then they’ll come down and take a look anyway.”

“Yeah, but if we’re all inside we got the edge on them. That way we stand a better chance of seeing them coming.”

“How? With the fucking curtains drawn?”

“Look—”

“No, you look. Either way it makes no difference. They’ve got to be sure before they start popping off and to be sure they’ve got to get close, know what I mean?”

“You know they already invented telescopic sights?” D’Antoni says. “I suppose you heard about those things?”

“The only way they can get a line on this particular piece of patio is by getting sherpas to carry their equipment.”

“They just could, you know that?”

I don’t answer him. I just keep my eyes shut and wait for him to go away. It takes a long time, but in the end, he does.

I go inside when it starts to get too warm for me. I go into the bathroom and take a quick shower and after that I’m strolling down the stone steps to get to the lounge and the drinks when Wally interrupts my progress by appearing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jack,” he says. “You got to do something.”

“Oh, yes?”

“They’re playing patience.”

I look at him. “They’re playing patience,” I say to him.

Wally advances up the steps a little bit.

“Yeah,” he says. “They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”

“They’re playing patience and they’re getting pissed to the gills.”

“Yeah. On that champagne mixture.”

I look down at my feet and then back at Wally.

“Wally,” I say to him, “you really do have a load of problems, don’t you? Every moment, something new to worry about. I don’t know how you manage, one day to the next.”

I begin to walk past him.

“No, listen,” he says. “They’re playing strip patience. With two packs. The one who gets out last has to take something off.”

“That don’t give Tina much a chance, then.”

“You don’t get it. She ain’t lost yet. It’s D’Antoni that’s losing. He’s down to his fucking underpants.”

“Well, he’s wearing the right pair then, isn’t he?”

Wally looks blank. I walk past him and down the last few steps and into the lounge and I discover that Wally hasn’t been at the cooking sherry, the game he’s just described is still in progress. Tina and D’Antoni are getting pissed to the gills, only Tina’s gills seem to be situated somewhat higher than D’Antoni’s as her concentration is more together than D’Antoni’s, although he’s more than making up for the softness in his head, judging by the hardness elsewhere, and to paraphrase the words of the lady, that’s not a gun he’s got in his underpants.

I cross the floor and make myself a drink and carry it over to where the game is. The two of them are kneeling on the floor like Buddhas, looking down at their own facing lines of cards like retired generals replaying the Battle of Waterloo. Tina has two aces out and an empty space waiting for one of the two kings showing. But this time D’Antoni looks as if he’s better placed as he’s showing three aces and all the cards he’s got face up are movable, and as I sit down on the arm of a leather settee D’Antoni is in fact engaged in moving the rows. Tina flips three cards from the top of her deck and comes up with a black five which she needs at the moment like she needs a Valentine on February 14
^th
. But as I sit and watch, the thought I have, going on Tina’s previous behaviour, is that she wouldn’t give a fuck if she had to take her bikini off; all she’s really interested in is getting D’Antoni down to the buff, because that’s the kind of girl she is.