Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (2 page)

Chapter Two

A
ND AN HOUR OR
so later it’s still beating against the glass of the Penthouse as I find out Audrey hadn’t been joking at all. Gerald and Les are sitting on the low white leather settees with the backs placed where the split level breaks down into the sunken square in the room’s centre. They’re sitting opposite each other in poses that perfectly describe their different personalities. Though they’re both relaxed, leaning back in the plump leather, holding their glasses, Les is not relaxed enough for his pose to create any more wrinkles in his mohair than are absolutely necessary. He’s resting his glass on a neatly crossed knee, one hand on the glass, the other holding his cigarette close to his shoulder, delicately, almost effeminately, and not a speck of ash on his mohair, whereas Gerald, of course, looks as though he’s been letting Les use his suit as an ashtray and there are so many wrinkles in the material that you’d never guess the suit was one of a half dozen he’d had sent round from Sammy three weeks ago. He’s sunk down in the leather with his legs wide open and his shirt half out and the drink in his glass about to slop out onto his left shoulder.

“Jack,” he says, twisting round, giving the final impetus to his drink. “Jack, my old darlin’, we just been talking about you, haven’t we, Les; ain’t that so?”

Gerald looks at Les as if he’s asking to be backed up in a barefaced lie and Les answers as if he couldn’t give a fuck about anything at all.

“Yeah,” he says. “We were just talking about you.”

Gerald gets up, beaming, expansive, vindicated.

“You see?” he says.

“Yeah, I see,” I tell him. “All depends what the fuck you’ve been saying, doesn’t it.”

Now it’s time for the hurt look.

“As if we’d ever say anything nasty about our number one son,” Gerald says. “As if we would, Les, eh?”

I walk over to the drinks cabinet.

“That’s right,” says Les. “Make yourself at home.”

One of these days, the years of cool I’ve maintained with Les is going to unfreeze and he’s going to go sailing out through the plate glass into the darkness of W.I.

But not today. Today, I’d rather just pour myself a drink.

“I thought as number one son I’d be entitled,” I say to Les, dropping a slice of lemon in my glass.

“Les,” says Gerald, “you know what your trouble is? You’re petty. You’ve always been petty. Even as a kid, when mother broke her leg that time and couldn’t get out the buildings for a month. Any errand she wanted doing you always tried to get a tip out of it.
Before
you went.”

“I never bleeding got one, though, did I?” Les says.

“Listen,” Gerald says to him. “One of these days you’ll learn the value of public relations. You’ll learn how to show people how much you value what they do for you instead of crapping all over them.”

“It’s all right,” I say to Gerald. “Don’t macaroni. I don’t give a fuck the way he is. I’m satisfied with what I get in this firm. I don’t need bonuses from that wanker.”

I take my drink and sit down on an armless easy chair in the floor level part of the room.

“Now see what you’ve fucking well done,” Gerald says to Les.

“Piss off.”

“And this was going to be a nice friendly chat when we showed Jack some appreciation for all he’s done for us this year.”

“It’s all right, Gerald,” I tell him. “Take it that I appreciate your appreciation.”

Gerald looks at Les. There is a long silence. Then Gerald says:

“Look, let’s forget it. Jack, have another drink.” He walks up the few steps from the centre of the room and takes my glass from me and back to where the drinks are. “No,” he says making the fresh drink. “What we were talking about, what we’ve been thinking of—we’d been saying, what a good year we’d had, mainly due to the way you’d looked after your side of the business.” Not to mention every other fucking side of the business, I think to myself.

Gerald comes back with my drink.

“So, how can we show our appreciation?” He stands there, palms appellant. “Money? Jack don’t need no money. Birds? Jack takes care of that himself. A gift? What can we give him his money can’t buy? And that’s what made us think of it. What can’t money buy?”

Gerald waits for me to ask him what money can’t buy and when I’ve done that he says:

“Time.”

I look at him.

“What, you going to shop me, are you?” I say to him.

Gerald blinks then bursts out laughing. “Great,” he says. “Fucking great. Isn’t that great, Les.”

“Favourite,” Les says.

Gerald laughs so hard he nearly bursts a gut. That goes on for another two or three minutes and then when he’s finished Gerald says:

“No, but seriously. When did you last have a holiday?”

“Skegness, fifty-three.” Les says.

I look at Les.

“Something like that,” I say.

“Shut up,” Gerald tells Les, without looking at him.

Then he goes on. “Jack, you should take a holiday.”

“Fine,” I tell him. “I’d like that. Can I start now?”

“No, I mean a real holiday,” Gerald says. “A proper one. Not lying on your back in your flat all day, not in this country, in this weather. No, you should go abroad. The sun. Get some sunshine down you. A fortnight’s worth.”

I look at him but I don’t say anything.

“So what we thought was,” Gerald says, “why don’t Jack use the villa for a fortnight?”

I still don’t say anything.

“The villa,” Gerald says. “In Majorca.” He looks at me with the expression of a conjuror who’s just done a trick. When the applause doesn’t materialise he goes on:

“It’s great, you know it is. You’ve seen the slides. Way up in the hills. Miles from anywhere. The pool. The sunshine. What more could you want?”

I look at him. Gerald closes his eyes then smacks the side of his head with the palm of his hand.

“The birds,” he says. “Of course, the cunt.” He opens his eyes again. “Listen, Wally Lomas’ll fix all that up for you. He knows the form out there. No need to take nothing with you. Like taking coals to Newcastle with old Wally fixing for you.”

“Wally Lomas? That old slag?”

“Yeah, well, I know he’s past it, but we gave him the job on account of what his old lady asked us on her deathbed that time Wally was given a compassionate and was on his way to see her. Only he got there too late, didn’t he? She asked us to see if we could do something about keeping Wally out of nick on account of their baby daughter, Tina, because she didn’t want Wally’s mother getting her hands on the offspring. So we promised her we’d see what we could do and with that she expired. Five minutes later Wally arrived. What a scene.

“Anyhow, next time that Wally gets out, we put it to him like this: There’s this villa we’ve just had converted and we need somebody to look after it and see to us and our guests whenever we’re out there which, as you know, is often. ’Course, Wally needs some persuading because he sees himself as an embryo Charlie Richardson but we tell him he’s already done more time than Charlie’ll ever do, including Charlie’s present stretch, and in any case, Wally should have stuck to the restaurant business like his old dad, because Wally’s almost as good as his old dad was. You should taste his meat balls in sauce. Anyway, in the end, we finally get through to him, and he’s been out there ever since. Never regretted a minute of it, he hasn’t.”

“Have you?” I ask Gerald.

Gerald smiles.

“Listen, don’t be stupid. Whose name’s on the contract? Who do you think it says owns the villa?”

I don’t say anything.

“Right,” Gerald says. “Wally’s finally made it. At last he’s got his castle in Spain. In a manner of speaking. So it works out fine for all of us. He’s a big wheel and we’ve got a front.”

I shake my head.

“Besides,” Gerald says, “Wally was so chuffed the way we attended to his old lady’s arrangements, he felt he was doing us a favour, not the other way around.”

I light a cigarette.

“Lovely,” I say to him. “A fairy tale of old Soho. Warms the cockles, it really does. Wolf Mankowicz should write it.” I click out the lighter flame and inhale. Then I say: “What was it Wally’s old lady went out with?”

There’s a small silence before Gerald says:

“Now look—”

“Cervical cancer, wasn’t it?” I say.

“Now look—”

“Fine looking woman, Wally’s old lady was. Pity she was took from us so soon. A great loss.”

“Now look—”

“You see?” Les says to Gerald. “See how your fucking policies divvy up?”

Gerald turns his back on me and looks up at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus fucking Christ. You start doing some cunt a favour and then you digress a little bit how you do some other cunt a favour and suddenly it’s all snide innuendo and that. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I tell you,” Les says, “that’s what you get if you try and treat the workers as equals. They bite at your balls.”

I smile and look at Les.

“In that case I don’t know what you’re so stand-offish for,” I tell him. “Seeing as how you’ve got no balls to lose.”

Les stands up and Gerald snaps out of his supplicant pose and shifts his body between Les and me although Les doesn’t move an inch in my direction once he’s got up. There’s a lot of eyeball stuff between the two of them and eventually Les sits down the way he was always going to do. Then he gets up again and goes over to the drinks and makes himself another one and sits down where he was before and then he lights a fresh cigarette. Gerald doesn’t move, he just stands there with his back still to me.

The silence goes on for a bit longer and I’m just about to finish my drink and get up and go when the door opens and who should come in but Audrey looking for all the world as though she’s spent the afternoon relaxing at the hairdresser’s instead of humping away in bed with me. Everybody looks towards the door when it opens and Audrey stands there taking in the atmosphere before she closes the door behind her. Then she says:

“What happened? Did the Arsenal lose the replay?”

Les clears his throat and would complete the job by spitting if it wasn’t his own carpet. But Gerald behaves differently from usual: instead of going through the slagging routine with Audrey he walks over to her and puts his arm round her shoulders and shepherds her into the room like a protective host would a shy late arrival. Audrey looks at him in complete suspicion.

“What’s all this in aid of?” she says.

“You know bleedin’ well, darlin’,” Gerald says. “Don’t come the old one-eyed soldier with me.”

Gerald and Audrey make their picturesque way over to the drink cabinet.

“Now then, sweetheart,” Gerald says. “What would you like to drink?”

“Jesus Christ,” says Les. “My stomach isn’t this strong. What’s the matter with you?”

“Leave it out, will you?” Gerald says. “We celebrated our wedding anniversary last night.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Les says. “Your wedding anniversary isn’t till April.”

“So?” Gerald says. “What do you do on the night you get married?”

Les just looks at him.

“Right,” Gerald says. “So we celebrated that, didn’t we.”

Audrey shrugs his arm off her and starts to make herself a drink.

“Bit of all right, wasn’t it, darlin’?” Gerald says to her.

“I don’t remember,” Audrey says.

Gerald grins at Les and he puts his hand up the back of Audrey’s skirt and feels her fanny from the rear at which Audrey knocks over the glass she’s filling as she starts fetching round a swing which is intended to connect with the side of Gerald’s head, but he’s prepared for it and he grabs her wrist before she can connect. He laughs and says: “What’s the matter? Frightened Jack might get a flash of your sweet little bum?”

Audrey doesn’t answer, not verbally anyway. She just gives him the look.

“Well don’t you worry about that. Jack’s broadminded. He’s seen plenty, haven’t you, Jack?”

“I’ve seen some,” I say to Gerald.

Audrey wrenches her hand away from Gerald’s grip and turns back to the drinks and sets her glass straight and starts all over again. Gerald winks and walks away from
her and says: “Giving the old lady a seeing to from time to time makes a nice little change. You forget that nobody does it like the old lady. But you single men don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

Les ignores him and I stand up.

“Where are you going?” Gerald says.

“I’ve got some work to do. I’m one of the workers, remember?”

“Hang about, hang about,” Gerald says. “Les didn’t mean what he said. It’s just his time of the month.”

Les doesn’t say anything.

“You didn’t, did you, Les?” Gerald says, looking at him. Les shifts a bit on the crackling leather and looks out at the black plate glass and says:

“No, all right. I didn’t mean it.”

Both Audrey and me look at Les as though we’re witnessing the second coming. Gerald beams at me and says: “You see? If Les says he didn’t mean it, he didn’t mean it.”

“You mean he didn’t mean it when he said he didn’t mean it.”

Gerald looks blank.

“Forget it,” I tell him and start towards the door.

“What in Christ’s name’s going on?” Audrey says.

“Oh, nothing,” Les says. “We’re only offering him the holiday of a lifetime, two weeks of carefree sunshine at the resort of his choice.”

Audrey looks at me and you’ve got to hand it to her, she’s a great little performer.

“So what’s wrong with that?” she says to me.

“I told them I’d prefer Skegness.”

“The villa,” Gerald says. “He can have the villa to himself for a whole bleeding fortnight.”

“I might get lonely,” I tell him.

“What’s the matter?” Audrey says, her face absolutely straight. “You frightened of flying or something?”

I just look at her but not the way I’d like to.

“Here,” Gerald says, and for once I’m glad he’s missed the point. “Is that what it’s all about? You scared of aeroplanes?”

I’m about to answer when Les cuts in.

“You ever been abroad before, Jack?”

I don’t answer.

“That’s it,” Gerald says. “He’s never been abroad before.”