Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (21 page)

I smile at him.

“You don’t mean I’m likely to get hammered here, do you?” I ask him. “I mean, what for, and who by?”

The sons look at each other again.

“All right—” Benny begins, but he doesn’t finish because Audrey decides it’s gone far enough; she probably doesn’t want anything spilt down her dress what she bought new in Oxford Street the other day.

“Leave it out,” she says, “we’re old friends. Let’s all be old friends, eh?”

Now even though the Dagenham sons have only been acquainted with Audrey for a short time, they recognise the voice of authority when they hear it. They both look at her.

“One of those mine?” Audrey says, indicating the drinks on the tray.

“Oh, yeah,” Benny says. “Here you are.”

He hands her her drink. Then he sits down and for a moment there’s a silence while the sons practise their hardest looks on me. Eventually I say to Audrey:

“Good flight, was it?”

“Great flight.”

“Only I was wondering if you’d landed yet.”

Audrey ignores that one and takes a sip of her drink.

“Room nice, is it?” I ask her.

“Nice. Lovely room. I’ll draw you a picture, so you’ll know what it’s like.”

“Got somebody to carry your bags up, did you?”

“Yes, I managed that.”

“Didn’t drop them, did he?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“I expect that was a relief.”

“Not for me, no.”

“No, I could see how it wouldn’t be.”

“Still, I gave him a tip, just the same.”

“That’s nice.”

“That’s what I thought.”

In the ensuing silence Barry says:

“You like another drink, Audrey?”

“What do you think?”

Barry puts Audrey’s glass on the tray alongside his and his brother’s and lifts the tray and begins to get up but before he can straighten himself I lean across the table and plant my glass on the tray with the others.

“Mine’s the same as Audrey’s.”

“Oh, had the operation, then?”

Barry comes to the conclusion that he’s not going to give me an argument over my glass so he straightens up and makes off for the bar. Benny offers Audrey a cigarette and lights both of them up. Audrey blows smoke out and says to me:

“Things all right up the road, then?”

“Oh yes, really smashing.”

“I told you you’d like it once you got used to it.”

“Yes, that’s what you told me. You know, plenty to do, sparkling company, all that kind of thing.”

“I’m glad. I really am.”

Just as Audrey’s saying that, some of the sparkling company from the villa enters the room, in the form of Tina. She stands in the archway for a minute, then she
sees me and gives me a certain kind of smile and starts walking towards our table.

“Oh, fuck me,” I say.

“Oh yes,” says Audrey. “And who’s this?”

“You know who it is,” I say to her. “It’s Wally’s offspring, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know. Last time I saw her was when she was sitting on Les’s knee when she was about eleven.”

“She’d like that.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“Stays with Wally for her holidays, doesn’t she?”

“Oh yes? As opposed to a ride in?”

I shrug. Now Tina’s reached the table.

“So this is where you hold your business conferences, is it? Well, it’s nice and peaceful for it.”

She sits down the other side of Audrey.

“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” she says. “On your holidays as well?”

“Remember me, do you?”

“ ’Course. Long time ago, though. These days you’re mostly out when I call round to see Dad’s benefactors.”

“Oh, yes? Give you presents, do they?”

Barry returns with the drinks. Benny says to him: “Things get better all the time, don’t they?”

Tina looks at him, then says to me: “These on the firm as well, then?”

I give her a look. She smiles sweetly back at me.

“What firm?” Benny says.

“Audrey,” I say to her. “Think it’s about time we were moving on, don’t you?”

“About now, yes,” Audrey says, standing up.

“You want to join us, Tina?” I say to her.

“Why? You going somewhere good?”

“Yeah. You’ll really enjoy it. Just your scene.”

“In that case,” she says, and gets up.

The Dagenham boys look as though Storey’s just put through his own net. I down my drink and put the glass on the tray.

“Hope the trouble and strifes get back all right,” I say to them.

I turn away from them and let Audrey and Tina get out from behind the table and when they’ve done that I begin to follow them in the direction of the bar. Barry says:

“That’s what I really like. A geezer what pays his corner.”

I turn round and walk back to the table.

“Well, I agree with you,” I say to him. “So when I go through the bar I intend getting a grip of the barman and sending you through a couple of Snowballs, all right?”

I turn away again and catch up with Audrey and Tina and when I’ve done that I herd the stupid cows over to the bar and sit them down; I mean, if Audrey hadn’t been trying to stir my pudding with Tweedledum and Tweedledee then Tina wouldn’t have had the opportunity to drop bollocks the way she did. And if Tina hadn’t crept back then Audrey wouldn’t have the aroma up her nostrils she now has.

I stand between the two of them and get a grip of Tina’s upper arm.

“Now listen,” I say to Tina, “Audrey and me’s got some business to do, and I mean business. So just bugger off to where you were going and stay away from those two fairies, all right?”

“Why should I?”

“I’ll tell you why; because if you don’t your old man’ll end up behind a whelk stall without a pension and there’ll be no more duty free holidays and no more art school fees and no more of the gear, but what there will be will be having Wally breathing down your neck until you meet your chartered accountant and go and live in Bromley.”

The barman appears and I order a drink for myself.

“Well,” Tina says. “You got a point.”

“So clear off and let us get on with it.”

She puts her hand on my knee and gives me her sweetest smile.

“Seeing as you’re such a little charmer,” she says.

She slides off the stool but her hand stays where it is.

“Going to pick me up later, then?” she says. “After you’ve finished your business?”

“It might take a long time,” I tell her.

“Well, you know where it is, when you’re ready to get me.”

The hand finally leaves the knee and Tina floats off towards the foyer. I stop watching her progress when I hear the sound of Audrey’s fingers snapping at the barman.

“I’ll have another one as well if you don’t mind.”

“You don’t think we ought to go to the bedroom?” I say to her.

“I want a drink.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t got any up there?”

“Listen, I want one down here. Or do you want me to go into the glasses routine?”

I order her a drink.

“Boring up at the villa, then, is it?” she says.

“You know Wally.”

“Yeah, I know Wally. Now I know his daughter, don’t I?”

“You met her before.”

“Not when she was wearing stockings and a suspender belt.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Stockings and a suspender belt. You could see them through the cheese-cloth. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“No, I didn’t notice.”

“No, you probably got first-hand knowledge.”

I don’t answer her.

“Well?”

I still don’t answer.

“You been poking her, haven’t you?”

I shake my head, in all sincerity, secure that I’m telling the truth.

“Pull the other one,” she says.

I shrug.

“I’ll rip that suspender belt off her and strangle her with it.”

“Listen,” I tell her, “if you thought I’d had her off she’d have been hanging from the chandeliers by now, so leave
it out, eh? I’m waiting to get the message it was so important for you to get over here.”

She switches moods again.

“Oh yes,” she says. “I was forgetting about that. Meeting new people, and all that.”

“Where is it?”

“In my room. Where do you think it is?”

“Well for fuck’s sake let’s get up there.”

“You want to get up there, do you?”

I close my eyes.

“Are we going or aren’t we?”

“It’s up to you. I’ve been waiting since I got off the plane.”

“Yeah, well you’ll have to wait a bit longer,” I say to her. “I’ve got one or two things to tell you before we get down to any of that.”

“Feel like getting down, do you?”

There’s no talking to her so I guide her off the stool and walk her into the foyer where the lifts are and press a button.

“You do know which floor you’re on,” I ask her.

She gets into the lift and it’s her turn to press a button. The door slides to and Audrey folds her arms and leans back against the panelling, eyes closed, a dreamy expression on her face.

“If I thought you had had her,” she says, “you know what I’d do to you, don’t you?”

I’ve got a pretty good idea, but I don’t tell her I have.

The lift stops and the door slides open and all we have to do is cross the hall and Audrey’s taking her room key out of her handbag. She unlocks the door, pushes it open and stands back for me to go in first.

Compared to the rooms at the villa this one’s a matchbox. There’s just enough room for a couple of single beds and a fitted wardrobe. There’s a bathroom off to the left and between the single beds there’s a bedside table and on it there’s an ice-bucket with champagne sticking out of it. It has the atmosphere of the inside of a suitcase. Audrey follows me in and closes the door and locks it and puts the
key back in her handbag. Then she goes over to the bed and sits down on the edge and leans across it and with a bit of a struggle pours two glasses of champagne and manages to manhandle mine over to me without spilling too much of it, but that’s immaterial as far as I’m concerned because I say to her:

“You got anything else?”

She looks at me. “You what?”

“Anything other than that. To drink.”

“What’s the matter with you then?”

“I’m sick of the sight of it. I’ve seen enough this twenty-four hours to send me back to large browns.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. Now where’s the bleeding envelope?”

Eventually Audrey tears her gaze away from me and puts the glasses down on the floor and reaches her handbag and opens it and takes out a long brown envelope and hands it to me. I tear the top off and slide out a small sheet of paper typewritten on both sides. I begin to read.

Dear Jack
,

By now you will have met Joseph D’Antoni, the associate of our associates in the States, and also by now he’ll have told you his story. We left that to him rather than tell you ourselves for various reasons, one being that we wasn’t sure he’d make it there and if he didn’t well what was the point of spoiling your well deserved holiday, eh, Jack? Didn’t want you fretting did we? Anyway, as it transpires, he did make it, so now you know the story, what he’s told you. Only you don’t, as it happens and neither did we until today, so don’t think yourself a cunt for not sussing it because we didn’t either. You know we’re pushovers for a hard luck story. It seems Joseph didn’t tell us everything and that what he did tell us was cobblers anyway and the real story is he took some liberties and our associates don’t know exactly how much he already said but if he says anymore not only them but us as well will be in dead lumber concerning a certain side of our operation, because if the lot over the water go down the pan we not only lose considerable readies we might go down it with them, if you get our meaning. So our friends get in touch with us today and it comes up that you’re over there and them being not a little bit pissed off with us it’s their suggestion that we do something about it, it being convenient that you and he are both out there, so to speak. We know that you will get our meaning and we don’t have to tell you what sort of bonuses will be in order regarding this one. Any removal work that might come in necessary Wally will put you right on and we know you can take care of things without disrupting your well-earned holiday too much
.

Gerald and Les

P.S. Let us know how things go when the phone comes back on again
.

When I’ve finished reading the letter I hold my thoughts in a kind of deepfreeze while I pick up the two glasses that Audrey’s set down on the floor and drink them dry, one after the other.

Now I’ve worked for the Fletchers for nearly twelve years, and many events have occurred over those years, many strokes have been pulled by the two of them, some of them so bizarre that they wouldn’t bear chronicling. But over the years I’ve grown accustomed to those kind of strokes, because I’ve been put in so many times. I mean, there was once a time they sent me out to fit up Jimmy Madison by pulling a job that had all the hallmarks while Gerald and Les were treating him to lunch at the Club, the idea being that when the law came to Jimmy’s doorstep he’d think he had it cast-iron with Gerald and Les, only what they said they intended saying when Old Bill checked up, what that not only had they not had lunch with him, they’d never even heard of him, not even his old mum what bore him gloriously into the world, and that denial, together with the testimonies of various handpicked witnesses, would put Jimmy away and out of competition for at least until Millwall
won the European Cup. Anyway that was the story I was told, but what was really on was that a member of Old Bill who was on the wages sheet had been indiscreet about how he spent his money; and so to scotch any impending investigation he’d been set to pull a few names out of the hat, Jimmy and the Fletchers being among them. So they’d got together and worked out that if the member of Old Bill was put on to the job, was tipped off about Jimmy, named him, then due to Jimmy’s alibi was made to look a right berk, the impending investigation would be speeded up by the vigour of the press. Which was all fair enough except that nobody put me in it, and as it happened a smart copper broke down a witness and I got put in it via a different route. I didn’t go down, because our brief was too good, but the point was, I could have done, and I wouldn’t have put myself in that position if I’d known all about the double shuffles the Fletchers were playing at with Jimmy.