Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (31 page)

“What the fuck’s going on?” she asks.

“Wally’s getting rid of the family album.”

Audrey looks at the smoke.

“The films?”

I nod.

“They’ll dock that lot out of his wages,” she says, then she goes back inside and pours a drink and re-appears.

“They’re late,” she says.

“ ’Course they’re fucking late.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Keep following instructions. That shouldn’t be no hardship.”

“He just sent me down for some more booze. He hasn’t even started yet.”

“Like I say, shouldn’t be no hardship. In fact, I thought the smoke was coming out the bedroom window.”

“Piss off.”

“What’s he doing now, chalking on the wall? Must be like the old days, waiting for the Saturday nighters.”

This time Audrey waits a minute or two before saying anything.

“If you climbed the wooden hill right now, we could be getting the champagne iced up ready for Peter and Con’s arrival.”

I just look at her. She shrugs.

“Suit yourself.”

She plucks a bottle off the drinks cabinet and turns away, swishing off in a slipstream of perfume.

“ ‘I did it my way,’ ” she sings, as she rounds the corner.

I grit my teeth and pour myself another drink and while I’m doing that Wally re-appears with another batch of boxes and walks past me out onto the patio. I follow him
out and I’m in time to see the flames shoot up and the smoke billow out and it reminds me of the time I witnessed the last of William Dugdale’s mortal remains prior to the scattering of his ashes in Epping Forest. Wally watches the smoke for a while. Then he picks up his cigarettes and matches that are lying on the stonework and lights himself up and at the moment he’s setting fire to the end of his cigarette he catches the petrol can with his left foot and topples it over on the edge of the pool so that the can see-saws on the edge and chug-a-lugs petrol onto the surface of the water. Wally shakes the match out and bends over and rights the can but his movement is so quick that petrol spills upwards out of the mouth of the can and lands on his forearm and on his slacks and Wally begins to fuck and blind but the fucking and blinding is short-lived because immediately the noise Wally is making becomes different, a scream, because the match he threw away didn’t go out, and the splashing petrol is adding fuel to its flame, rippling across the stonework to the bottom of Wally’s slacks which start to take light, causing him to start leaping about like Mick Jagger, again knocking over the petrol can. More petrol spills out and the flames join the fresh lot and race across the stonework to the oil drum to augment the celluloid heat. Wally engages himself in a battle with the belt that’s holding up his trousers, but he’s never going to finish first. So I walk over to him and give him a shoulder which sends him flying off the stonework and out into the pool. The splash Wally makes is like a small explosion, throwing water up to sizzle onto the lighted petrol. Wally surfaces and spits out water as if he’s in competition with Gerald’s fish.

“One of these days, Wally,” I tell him, “you’ll do something without doing it arse about face.”

Wally continues splashing about in the water.

“Jack,” he says, between mouthfulls.

“I expect you never learnt to swim before you learnt to set fire to yourself.”

“Jack—”

“You really are a prize cunt, Wal,” I tell him. “No wonder they put you out here, all on your own.”

“Jack—”

I shake my head and I’m just about to turn away when I notice a curious thing. Instead of just the large billowing shadow of the smoke reflecting in the pool, there are two new reflections, gliding softly into view like a couple of water snakes striking out from a canal bank.

“Jack—” Wally says again.

“It’s all right, Wally,” I say, turning round. “I realise what you were trying to spit out.”

It’s funny, looking at Con McCarty and Peter the Dutchman in the Spanish sunshine. They don’t look real. They look like something out of Madame Tussaud’s except the wax is beginning to melt. Con is wearing his eternal leather hat and his leather coat, but Peter, of course, is wearing something more appropriate to the climate, the latest in Mediterranean casual wear, offset by the purple tints of his sunglasses and his bleached hair that’s roughly the same colour as the sunshine. He looks like a bent barman trying to pull them in Piccadilly. The one thing they do have in common, though, are the shooters they’re carrying in their hands.

“Well, well,” Peter says. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”

Wally splashes towards the edge of the pool and I don’t say anything so Peter continues.

“I mean,” he says, “the
Son et lumière
display. Wally doing his Esther Williams bit. All it needs is Busby Berkeley wielding his megaphone.”

Con looks at the mountains.

“Leave it out, Peter,” he says. “It’s too fucking warm.”

“Is it just the heat, or do you feel embarrassed?” I ask him.

“You not going to give us any trouble, are you Jack?” Peter says.

“ ’Course not. I’m on my holidays, aren’t I?”

“In that case,” Peter says, “you won’t need what you got stuffed up your shirt, will you?”

Peter walks over to me and holds his hand out. I give him D’Antoni’s automatic. Behind me the fire is still sending heat waves up and down my back.

Wally gets to the edge of the pool.

“Give us a hand, Jack,” he says.

“What, after the one you just gave me? Fuck off.”

Peter grins.

“Poor old Wally,” he says. “Never could make it on his own.”

“Come on,” Con says to Peter. “Let’s be getting on with it.”

“Just enjoying the sunshine a minute, sweetheart,” Peter says, taking a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket.

“We enjoyed the bleeding sunshine all the way up the bleeding road, when the taxi blew out, didn’t we?” Con says.

“Philistines,” Peter says. “All I get is Philistines to work with.”

“You should start walking a different way then, shouldn’t you?” Con says.

Peter ignores him and unfolds the piece of paper, studies it, then looks at the villa. In the meantime Wally makes it out of the pool and sits on the pool’s edge, coughing and heaving as if he’s just done a lap round White City.

“Yes,” Peter says, agreeing with whatever he’s been turning over in his mind. “Right.”

“You’re sure?” Con asks him.

“There’s no need for you to come,” Peter says.

“What you talking about?”

Peter gives him a look and the look doesn’t have to take me in for Con to get his meaning.

‘Well, all right,” Con says.

“That’s right,” Peter says.

Peter keeps the look on Con for a minute longer then he turns away and walks towards the sliding windows, leaving Con looking even more embarrassed than before.

“You’ll get over it,” I tell him.

“You what?”

I grin at him.

“Never mind. Come and have a drink.”

I start to walk towards the villa.

“Hang about, Jack,” Con says.

I stop walking and face him again.

“Leave it out, Con. You’re not going to do it that way. You’ll probably leave it to Peter, anyway.”

“Jack, this ain’t my idea, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. So come and have a drink.”

I turn away and start walking again and apart from dropping me there and then Con has no choice but to follow on the principle that he can’t risk letting me out of his sight. He’s right with me when I reach the plate glass and he’s still by my side when I reach the drinks. Peter, by that time, has traversed the lounge and is now, I imagine, half way up the stairs.

“What you like, Con?”

“Some kind of beer,” Con says. “Lager, if you got any.”

I bend down and open the refrigerated cabinet and while I’m doing that Con takes a moment out to look round the room and inwardly digest its splendours and so it’s no problem for me to take D’Antoni’s other shooter from behind the lagers where I stacked it earlier, and stand up and put the snub barrel against Con’s lips and get a grip on his own shooter. Con goes rigid. I press the barrel tighter against his mouth and shake my head and Con stays rigid. Then, after a little while, Con relaxes and smiles and with his free hand pushes my shooter away from his face.

“Christ, I don’t mind,” he says. “So you overpowered me. Not a lot Gerald and Les can do about that, is there?” We look at each other and then I smile back at him.

“You got lager in there, or just shooters?” Con says.

“Help yourself,” I tell him. “I got something to do. Only, I will take your shooter, just in case the lager goes to your head.”

Con shrugs and hands me his shooter and is about to turn his attention to the refrigerated cabinet when from upstairs comes the sound of a shot. Fuck it, I think to myself, Peter moved quicker than I thought he would. I run across the lounge and then there’s two more shots and I’m in the hall and I’m more than somewhat surprised to see that Peter has only made it as far as the top of the steps and it’s for sure that he hasn’t fired his one because he’s standing there like a rabbit at the arrival of a ferret. I begin to run up the stairs and Peter whirls round and sees the two shooters I’m carrying and hauls a couple off at me but luckily they’re wild because while he’s hauling them off he’s also throwing himself to the landing floor which affects his aim more than a little bit. But at the same time they’re not wild enough to make me feel inclined to continue to the top of the steps so I about-face and scamper to the bottom of the steps and round the corner of the lounge, colliding with Con in the process. At the same time a door upstairs slams and Peter hauls off another shot in the direction of the slamming door and the next thing I hear is Audrey screaming meaningless odds along the passage, and Peter, more intelligible, shouting:

“You fucking bitch, you and your ponce, you set us up.”

It’s my turn to shout now so I stick my head round the lounge corner.

“Peter, you bleedin’ egg, it ain’t a set up. Leave it out and get Audrey out of it. He ain’t supposed to have a shooter.”

“I know he bleedin’ ain’t, don’t I? Oh, yes, I know that.”

Audrey’s screeching stops and farther down the landing there’s the sound of a different door slamming and I guess that Audrey’s made it to my room, where Tina’s still laying her lonely locks.

“I shouldn’t stay there if I was you,” I call to Peter. “He knows you’re there now.”

I must admit I enjoyed that one.

“Yeah, and so do you, don’t you?”

“Suit yourself,” I call back.

“What’s going on, for Christ’s sake?” Con says.

“I’ve no fucking idea. I’d copped for both the bastard’s shooters.”

“So what’s happening?”

“I’ve told you. I’ve no fucking idea.”

As I’m saying that there’s a blur of movement out in the hall and I swing round just in time to see Peter legging it from the bottom of the stairs to the other side of the ornamental fish. He crouches down and rests his gun arm on the fish’s tail. Con and I retreat fully round the corner.

“Leave it out, Peter,” Con calls to him. “Jack’s in the bleedin’ dark like we are.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, so stop buggering about.”

I leave them to their little argument and walk over to the plate glass and out onto the patio. The flames are much lower now, and Wally is no longer sitting on the edge of the pool, which is not an altogether surprising fact. I look up at the balcony that runs along the face of the villa. Then I pick up one of the recliners and walk over to the wall. I turn the recliner arse about face and prop it up longways against the wall and use the tubular steel cross pieces as a ladder until I can get a handhold on the balcony’s wrought iron work and pull myself up. When I’ve done that I swing my leg over and walk over to the plate glass of my window. The curtains are still drawn but the window is open. So in I go.

Audrey is crouched by the door, listening. She is naked except for my jacket which she’s draped round her shoulders. Tina is sitting on the bed, and she, of course, is just plain naked. Neither of them notice me slide through the curtains.

“I done the downstairs windows,” I say. “Shall I do these ones now?”

They both swing round like you’ve never seen and Audrey’s like the colour of heart failure. Her movement causes her to sit on the floor and I wouldn’t lay odds on her ever getting up again.

“Jesus,” she says. “Jesus Christ.”

“What’s happening?” Tina says.

I ignore her and say to Audrey:

“What you been playing at, then?”

Audrey doesn’t answer. She just stays where she is on the floor, propping her back up against the door. So I put the shooters on the bed, walk over to her and lift her up and give her a couple and ask her again. She shakes free and starts screaming the odds again.

“I was trying to row you out of your bother, wasn’t I? Seeing as you lost your bottle I was stopping you from being topped, wasn’t I?”

“What do you mean? What was all the shooting?”

“Some of it was me and some of it was him.”

“Audrey—”

“Listen, you berk. In the bedroom, in the dressing table drawer, Gerald always keeps a little shooter, don’t he? So when it turns out that Con and Peter’s late, I reckon that if when they arrive D’Antoni’s already topped, you’re not going to get topped yourself, especially if I say
you
done the topping. Then everything’s the same as it was, ain’t it?”

I look at her and overcome the temptation of telling her how little I appreciate people taking a hand in my destiny. Instead I say:

“So what happened?”

“After the last session, I go to the bathroom, don’t I, and on my way back I sit down at the dressing table like I’m going to fix myself up and I open the drawer where the shooter is, only I don’t exactly have anywhere on my person I can hide it, if you get my meaning. So I look in the mirror and weigh up the odds of managing it from the dressing table but because of the way he is on the bed he’s only going to get one up his arse. That being the case, I ask him to fetch me a drink and he swings his legs over the side of the bed and starts busying himself at the bedside table. So while he’s thus occupied I take the shooter out of the drawer but I’m snookered by Gerald’s Hall of Mirrors set-up, via which
D’Antoni susses out what I’m up to. I’ve not even got the safety catch off before he’s up off the edge of the bed, and coming at me throwing bottles and God knows what in my direction. Anyway somehow the shooter goes off before he gets to me and although I’m not aiming I get him in the top of the leg and although he screams like a tart it doesn’t stop him throwing himself at me and the two of us finish up on the floor. What with him slowed down a bit I manage to get away from him but not before he’s collared the shooter and hauled a couple off that are not too wide of the mark, I can tell you, and I’m pleased to get out the door, at least, until Peter starts hauling them off in all directions.”