Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (30 page)

“I come up here to tell you, didn’t I? But you didn’t want to know, did you? You couldn’t see why I’d come.”

She inhales some more and I wait for her to go on.

“I didn’t hear the phone just now. Straight up. But I was expecting it to ring like that. Only not this morning. Late this afternoon or tonight. But not this morning. Because you were going on an afternoon flight, I wasn’t too worried. See, if it rang twice like that, and I wasn’t by the phone a second time to pick it up first ring, then the fact that I
didn’t
answer meant that an hour from it ringing I’d be in my bedroom keeping D’Antoni occupied so’s it be easy for them to walk in and get it over with.”

“And me?”

“Well, just because you’d turned it down, there’d be no reason for you to interfere with two old mates going about their business would there?”

“Two old mates?”

“Con McCarty and Peter the Dutchman.”

I don’t say anything for a minute or two.

“So,” I say eventually. “That’s what you intended to tell me. When they’ve done for him it’s down to them to see to me.”

“That’s what Gerald and Les’ve told them, yes. But I knew you’d be gone before they got here, so after the barneys and that I thought, stuff it, why should I?”

“Oh yeah?”

“That’s what I thought.”

There’s another silence between us. Audrey breaks it by saying:

“That’s why I humped with D’Antoni last night. So’s it wouldn’t seem too previous, like, if I came on strong after the phone calls.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Why should I tell you if it wasn’t?”

“I wonder.”

I throw my cigarette in the bathwater.

“Funny, isn’t it?” I say. “Con and Peter. The favours I done for them.”

“They just work for the firm.”

“Yeah, I suppose they do. I mean, Peter I can understand. He’s been looking for this one for years. But Con, though.” I shake my head.

“Well, I suppose, as they say, that’s life.”

I stand up.

“So what you going to do? Clear off out of it?”

I bend over and scoop up a handful of bubbles out of the bath and look at them.

“You put Wally in on what’s going off?”

“You’re joking. He only gets to know when they’re coming down the drive.”

I turn my palm downwards and shake the bubbles back into the bath.

“So what you going to do?” Audrey asks again.

“I’m going to wait and have a chat with me old mates, aren’t I? I mean, must be all of three days since I set eyes on them.”

“You’re barmy. You could be well out of it.”

I lean over the bath again only this time it isn’t bubbles I pluck out of it, it’s Audrey. I sit her down on the edge of
the bath that I’ve been sitting on and I tell her: “Listen, you thick bitch, for years and fucking years I kept those two wankers upright, and by default, yourself. It’s because of me you got interested in how the firm was run, and consequently got a taste for running it, and consequent to that you got stacked away what you got stacked away in our joint and non-native bank accounts. And now you, the three of you, you all think if I’m not seen to jump for once in my life then I’m eligible for the drop and I’m not even accorded the honour of facing it out on my own patch, they can’t wait five fucking minutes to switch me off, and I’ve been responsible for every thread in their mohairs. So that being the case, I intend enjoying the last day of my holidays, and instead of sending Gerald and Les a card to tell them what a good time I’ve had I’ll express my enjoyment and gratitude in a different way, in a manner which will also challenge their cloud seven assumptions about themselves and about myself. All right?”

Audrey pushes my hands from her shoulders and digs up a bit of bottle from somewhere. “Listen, you cunt, you don’t have to come on like this. All you have to do is walk downstairs and screw down D’Antoni and it’s like the magic wand, everything is back the way it should be. Midas isn’t sticking to his gilt any more. Jesus, I only came on strong about D’Antoni this morning in the hopes you’d spring to your feet and do him there and then.”

“Oh, yes,” I say to her. “About that.”

I give her one across the face and as she’s ensured that I no longer have a grip on her shoulders she falls backwards into the bath and bunches of bubbles fly up and stick to the tiles like an explosion of disturbed amoeba. Audrey splashes around in an attempt to resurface, spitting the suds from her mouth as though she’s just taken one in the mouth for the first time. I bend over and grasp her slippery arms and pull her up out of the water.

“So,” I say to her. “Now we’ve got that out of the way, the plan stays the same.”

Audrey spits out the last of the bubbles.

“You what?”

“The plan. What everybody’s fixed up between themselves. Remember that?”

“What, you want me to keep D’Antoni busy like I did last night?”

I wipe a dribble of bubble from the corner of her mouth and support it on the end of my little finger.

“Exactly like you did last night,” I say to her, transferring the bubbles to the centre of her lips.

She brushes the bubbles away and says:

“Why should I? I’ve got myself to look after now. Why should I do that, now I know what you’re up to?”

“For the reason, my love, that you told me what you told me. Even though you did leave it a bit late.”

I take a grip on her jaw with my thumb and forefinger and shake her head a little bit.

“You were going to do it anyway. Now you can really enjoy it, seeing as you got my blessing.” I let go of her. After a little while she says:

“You’re never going to row yourself out of this one. You know that, don’t you? Even if you get off this island.”

“Listen, loved one, I’m going to get off this island, because I want to see the faces of Gerald and Les when I turn up in the role of my surrogate postcard. So have your bath and be downstairs in fifteen minutes because that’s the time I’ve got you down to start performing.”

I turn away and begin to walk towards the bathroom door.

“What happens,” Audrey says, “if everything goes your way? I mean, just supposing, like, you get out of here; you see to Gerald and Les and the same law and everybody else, just supposing all that comes off. What happens to me?”

I stop walking and turn to face her.

“What do you mean, what happens to you?”

“We still partners, are we?”

“I thought we dissolved that in a hotel room in Palma.”

“Did you really?”

I don’t say anything.

“There’s still a simpler way,” she says.

“I’ll see you downstairs in fifteen minutes,” I tell her, and turn away again.

Chapter Sixteen

D
OWNSTAIRS IN THE LOUNGE
, D’Antoni is peering out through the still-drawn curtains, poised shiftily like Grigsby in
The Lady from Shanghai
.

“Has the milk been delivered yet?” I say to him.

D’Antoni whirls round and almost fetches the curtains with him.

“What’s happening?” he says. “Where’d you go?”

“Nothing’s happening, and you know where I went. I went upstairs, didn’t I?”

“What for?”

“I went to the karsi, didn’t I?”

“There’s one down here.”

“Is there really? Silly of me.”

I walk over to the button that operates the curtains and they swish apart. D’Antoni retreats from the light with the madness of a moth in reverse.

“Bang, bang,” I say.

“Listen,” he says. “You’d be the same. You don’t know the score. You’re from nowhere. You don’t know what kind of guys these are.”

I smile to myself and open the windows and walk back to the drinks and pour myself another one.

“For Christ’s sake pour yourself a drink and calm down,” I tell him. “You got nothing to worry about.”

I walk past him and out onto the patio. The pool is as flat as formica and the day’s heat is already building up. By the pool there’s a lounger with the back raised, under the shade of a parasol. I walk over and get on the lounger and stretch out my legs and prop my back up and survey the mountains. They’re still the same colour and they’re still as boring. I take a sip of my drink. D’Antoni’s voice drifts across from the open windows.

“Get back in here.”

I take a sip of my drink.

“Those calls,” he says. “I know what they were.”

“Don’t be silly. Who would they be intended for?”

D’Antoni doesn’t answer.

“Well, there you are then.”

“It smells, that’s all I know,” D’Antoni says.

From further back in the lounge comes another voice.

“What smells?”

“Nothing.”

There’s a clink of glasses and Audrey says: “I thought the drains might be acting up again.”

D’Antoni goes back into the lounge and for a while there’s the sound of the two of them talking together and from the tone of their voices Audrey is swinging the conversation the way she’s supposed to. I sip my drink and continue to watch the mountains. Nothing happens to them but inside the villa the talking eventually stops. I give it another five minutes and then I get off the lounger and walk back into the villa. The lounge is empty except for the aroma of Audrey’s perfume. I cross the lounge and walk upstairs. The door to Audrey’s room is closed. I keep going until I get to my room. This time Tina is lying on her stomach, but although the position is different, the snoring is the same. Without waking her, I dig out D’Antoni’s shooters from their hiding place and then I go back downstairs and look
for Wally. I try all the usual places but I finally find him in the garage, sitting on a petrol can and staring out at the brilliant square of white sunlight beyond the open garage door.

“What you doing sitting in here on your tod, Wal?” I ask him.

“As a rule, nobody comes in here, that’s why,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say, perching my backside on the edge of tire. “It must be a piss-off, you having the run of the place all year round and then suddenly everywhere you turn there’s characters in every room.”

Wally doesn’t answer. I look out into the sunlight.

“That Merc’s going to get warmish if you leave it out there much longer,” I say.

“Fuck the Merc,” Wally says.

I take out my cigarettes and light up.

“Anyway,” I say, “there’ll be a couple more for you to fall over shortly.”

Wally looks at me.

“What?” he says.

“A couple more. Coming up the villa.”

“Who?”

“Con McCarty and Peter the Dutchman.”

Even in the garage gloom, Wally’s change of colour is noticeable.

“Con and Peter?” he says.

I nod my head. Wally gets up off the petrol can and walks over to me.

“Jack,” he says, “what the fuck’s going on, eh?”

“Nothing you need worry about,” I tell him. “Only when they get here, if you’re around when they first arrive, don’t get the megaphone out, will you? Just let them come in and do what they want and keep your mouth shut, eh?”

“Jack, listen—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve told you. There’s nothing to worry about.”

I get off the tire and walk out into the sunlight and go over to the Merc. I put my hand on the bonnet and it’s like touching a kitchen range.

Compared to the rest of the day, stretched out under the bushes, it’s relatively cool, but that is only relatively. From time to time I make myself feel better by looking between the leaves at the path that leads to the road, and imagining what it would be like lying out on that hot earth. I look at my watch. Any time now, they should be here.

An hour later, and I’m still looking at my watch, and there’s still nothing. I swear to myself. The only way they can get to the villa is along this path. But even if there was another way, there’s been no sound of a motor up on the road, and even if they’d parked miles away, I’d still have heard it, up in this silence. I swear again and get to my feet. I look towards the road. Nothing. The path’s just the same as when I came down it the other night, only sunlit. I turn and look towards the villa. That’s still the same too. Except from beyond it, from the side where the swimming pool is, black smoke is billowing up into the clear blue sky.

I make my way out of the bushes and start hurrying back down to the villa. I round the corner of the building. The pool is still as flat as before. There’s nobody on the patio, but there is an oil drum, and the oil drum is where the smoke is gushing from, and a few feet away from the oil drum is, if I’m not mistaken, the petrol can that Wally was sitting on when he was in the garage.

I walk a little closer to the oil drum and while I’m doing that Wally emerges from the lounge windows carrying a stack of boxed films, which he starts throwing, one by one, into the drum.

“What the Christ are you playing at?” I ask him.

Wally continues throwing the films into the fire.

“They already got Geronimo, you know. It’s too late to warn him now.”

Wally throws the last box into the drum.

“I’m getting rid of that lot, aren’t I?”

“What lot?”

“Those ones. You know the ones I mean.”

He looks at the smoke for a moment, then he goes back inside the villa. A few minutes later, Audrey appears framed in the sliding glass.