Take the A-Train (12 page)

I saw Teddy’s teeth flash in a grin. ‘Sure we will.’

I looked for the BMW. ‘Where’s the car?’

‘There.’ And he pointed to the vehicle that was blocking the driveway. It was a new-looking Suzuki SJ413 with a soft top. Under the harsh white light from the street lamps I saw that the Japanese jeep was turquoise and lavender with a white hood. It looked like an exotic variety of ice-cream. I shut the house door behind me, pulled on my coat against the cold night air and walked over and tried the passenger door. It was unlocked.

I opened it and climbed warily into the seat, scanning the interior. Cellphone, CD player and a radio that did everything bar make the tea. I suppose the car had less gadgets than the flight deck of a space shuttle, but it was a close call. Teddy, who had followed me over, opened the driver’s door, got behind the wheel and switched on the sidelights. The dash lit up like the New York skyline.

‘No wonder you guys exchanged a whole continent for a handful of beads and mirrors,’ I said.

‘Have you ever been punched in the mouth?’ asked Teddy, in a not unfriendly way.

‘Often. But Emerald told you to help me, not inflict actual bodily harm. I suppose you wear colour co-ordinated boxer shorts.’

‘Your jokes are crap and you never let up.’

‘That’s what my wife used to say.’

‘I didn’t know you were married.’

‘I’m not.’

‘See what I mean.’

‘Are you?’ I asked to make conversation.

‘Shit, no, man. I don’t need that kind of piano on my back. I like to spread myself thin. There’s too much of me for just one woman.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said. ‘Joe Cool.’

His teeth flashed in the half darkness. ‘That’s my name, baby, don’t wear it out.’ Teddy seemed in high good humour which was more than I could say for myself.

‘So where is the lady?’ he asked.

‘She’ll be here,’ I said, and as if to prove me right the little yellow car barrelled up the road towards us and slid to a halt on the other side of the street with a squeal of rubber. Fiona killed the engine and the lights and opened her door and climbed out. I opened the door of the jeep and called to her.

‘Christ, is that you?’ she said. ‘What’s this, something out of a Christmas cracker?’

‘Funny,’ said Teddy.

I got out of the jeep and pulled the front seat forward on its hinges. ‘Get in,’ I said.

Fiona climbed into the back seat. I hitched myself in and looked at her. She was all wrapped up in a dark coat and had a man’s trilby pulled down over her hair. ‘What’s the story?’ she asked.

‘No change. We go to the hotel, you two find somewhere out of the way. I go and see Lupino and suss him out. Don’t forget, I was told to come alone. If it’s cool, I come and get you. If not, I don’t.’

‘What about me?’ asked Teddy.

‘You’re a different matter. I believe you said that Bim and his buddies are not partial to people of your particular ethnic persuasion.’

‘So?’

‘So, you’re staying out of that room.’

‘I thought I might be.’

‘Back of the bus job,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve had that every day of my life.’

And I suppose he had. No wonder he wasn’t mad about whites. I left it. What more could I say?

Teddy ground the starter of the jeep and the engine caught first time. He switched the lights to full beam, slid the stubby gearstick into first, checked over his shoulder and pulled out into the street. We went back to the South Circular where I seemed to be spending half my life lately and down through the ’burbs to Bickley and all the delights it had to offer.

The main roads were like bandages of light stretched across a wounded city. They were soda-pop orange striped with neon red and blue and sickly green that turned the pedestrians’ faces corpselike. As the highways were light so the back streets and alleyways were dark. So dark indeed that they stole the memory of light from the street lamps spaced too far apart and the odd unshaded window and ground it flat into the gutters.

It was mini-cab city where we were going. Black cabbies seem to think you need a visa to get into New Cross and Peckham. So every other car we saw seemed to be a four door coke-bottle Cortina with a thin, chrome, magnetic aerial resting on a piece of plastic to save the re-spray.

There were a lot of rusty white Transits too, being driven by fat geezers in T-shirts who either couldn’t afford jumpers or thought it was the height of machismo to freeze their upper arms in the December frost. Teddy drove well. He put a Marvin Gaye CD into the machine and we listened and hardly spoke as we went.

We got to the outskirts of Bickley about nine and drove through the town as directed. The entrance to the Royal Hotel loomed up on our right just as the voice on the telephone had promised. The front of the building was lit up to match the Christmas tree set on the lawn in front of the main door to the hotel. The place had all the signs. A tasty little crib for villains to cut the mustard. Straights also served as camouflage, of course. Teddy followed the signs to the car park. I’d gone right off them after my last little excursion and told him so. He told me to relax and drove to the farthest corner, away from the lights and at least thirty feet from the nearest motor. Right then I wished I hadn’t thrown the Browning in the river.

W
e got out of the car and walked across the blacktop and around the front to the revolving doors of the hotel.

Inside it was party time for the local swingers. All the crims in South London who had made good and migrated down the Old Kent Road until they hit enough green to call the country and had settled down and taken root. The place was chocka with the nouveaux riches. I had spotted Rollers and Porsches and Bentleys and big BMWs and the odd Cadillac and Stingray in the car park.

There were a lot of young tarts about hanging on to older men with hair clawed over their bare scalps and a tendency to paunchiness. And old tarts too with their toy boys. The place was full of hungry-eyed females. I know I’m no Richard Gere but I could feel their eyes crawling over me at forty feet. I tell you what, if you couldn’t pull in the Royal Hotel, Bickley, you might as well collect your P45 and apply for your pension. Of course, if you did pull you could just offend some face and might well end up under the foundations of the M2 extension as between the sheets with a mystery for a night of passion. Fiona noticed the looks too and flashed me one of her own. I was pleased that Teddy got more than me.

We crossed the overheated foyer to the check-in desk and I beckoned the receptionist over. He was a fat old queen in a tight grey suit. ‘Vegas Bar?’ I queried.

‘Through the doors there.’ He pointed. ‘Into the Lloyd-Webber wing.’ I was beginning to get the taste of the place by then.

‘But there’s a private party on tonight,’ he added.

‘I’m expected,’ I said. ‘Is there another bar?’

‘Of course, sir, several. The Cocktail Bar, the Lounge Bar and the Jolly Cockney Bar.’

We were spoilt for choice. ‘Not the Jolly Cockney Bar,’ said Fiona.

‘Where’s the Lounge Bar?’ I asked.

‘Just across the foyer, sir, and down one flight of stairs.’ He pointed again.

‘Thanks.’

‘My pleasure.’

‘You want to wait for me in there?’ I said to Teddy and Fiona.

‘Looks like we don’t have much choice,’ she said back.

I didn’t argue, just made kissy face at her, waved and went in the direction the receptionist had indicated, through double doors and along a thickly carpeted corridor decorated with pictures of Old Bickley, and then to another set made of polished wood and sparkling crystal, etched with motifs of flowers and grapes. A board had been set up in front of the doors. In white plastic lettering on a black background it read:

‘Mister Lupino,’ I said to the maître d’ who was guarding the door against all comers as if his life depended on it, which it probably did. ‘He’s expecting me. My name is Sharman.’

The maître d’ beckoned over a white-jacketed waiter, whispered in his ear and sent him scuttling over to a gangster in a powder blue tux with matching frills on his dress shirt. He, in his turn, threaded his way through the crowd up a couple of wide stairs to a quieter part of the bar and spoke to half a ton of swarthy trouble shoe-horned into a Moss Bros reject that fitted as tightly as a condom. The huge guy looked over at me and then turned and vanished into the gloom. I was left standing.

Then the story reversed itself. The big bloke came back and spoke to the powder blue tux who hurried down the stairs and spoke to the waiter who was still waiting. Which was his job, after all. The waiter came back to the maître d’ and whispered for half a minute to him. The maître d’ squinted down his nose at me, which was difficult as I was at least three inches taller than he was, and said in a cod French accent, ‘Monsieur Lupino will see you now.’

‘Cheers,’ I said bravely back with no accent at all, and slid around him into the bar like Daniel into the lion’s den. It was packed inside and the air-conditioning was taking a hiding. The bar was awash with Christmas. Any more tinsel and the rafters would have collapsed. The room was full of bimbos getting near the end of their shelf life and clutching on to their sexuality with sharp red nails and the help of sun beds and designer dresses in suede and Lurex.

There was a four-piece combo on a dais in the corner farthest from the bar, playing a turgid version of
You’ve Got A Friend
. The wives, with their silver tints and panda white eyes and third finger left hand crusted with diamonds, were envying their own daughters’ youthfulness and mouthing the words of the song to their uninterested husbands, as if it would bring some excitement back into their marriages.

Fat chance.

I made my way through the crowd and the band segued into
Billie Jean
and I was up the broad steps into the sanctum.

The festivities hadn’t percolated across to this corner of the bar. Even the decorations looked sad. There were four men standing where maybe a dozen would fit comfortably. But no one was interested in intruding on their personal space. The bar top was littered with empty glasses rimed with scum. The minder was waiting for me with two regulation well-hard razor boys whose tailors allowed an extra inch or so in their jackets on the opposite side to their gun hand to allow room for a shoulder holster. The fourth man was different. I could tell that even though he was standing back out of the dim light that filtered through from where the main action was.

I stood for a minute.

The huge man came over to me. ‘Sharman?’ he asked.

I nodded. He sounded like whoever I’d spoken to when I’d telephoned Nine Elms earlier.

The heavy shook his head. More in sorrow than in anger, I think. ‘You fucking mug,’ he said, and went over to the fourth man. He stood with his back towards the bar, facing out across the dance floor with a perfect view of all the room. A sniper’s view.

The heavy went and whispered in his ear. The whole crew must have had videos of
The Godfather
at home.

I saw a glint from Bimpson Lupino’s eyes and he motioned for me to step forward into his presence.

‘Mister Lupino,’ I said.

He was taller than I had expected, better looking, better dressed. I’d expected Edward G. Robinson and I got Anthony Quinn playing Aristotle Onassis in a crappy mini series. He stuck out his hand and I shook it. I only counted my fingers once when I got it back.

‘Mister Sharman, so glad you could come,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

Unfortunately his voice let him down. It was thick and ugly. Half Cockney and half Greek, but no jokes about kebabs. He had nice teeth though and he knew it. He left them uncovered too long after every smile.

He pointed to the heavy. ‘Max,’ he said. Max nodded as if it hurt. I nodded back. The razor boys were Rick and Lonzo. More nods, more pain. ‘You want a booze?’ Bim asked.

‘Lovely,’ I said calmly, but I was shitting myself. I felt like a fillet steak in a pool full of piranha fish.

Lonzo rapped on top of the bar and a rabbity girl in a white blouse and black skirt popped up like a jack in the box. Although the rest of the bar was packed and people were cutting each other’s throats for a drink, it seemed that Mister Lupino was not to be kept waiting.

‘Same again,’ said Lonzo. ‘And?’ He looked at me.

‘Vodka and tonic,’ I said. ‘Large one.’

Lonzo squinted at me, but ordered the drink nevertheless. I was glad to see the barmaid free pour from a Blue Label bottle.

I picked my drink off the bar. I was shaking but it was controllable. I liked that. It made me feel better. Rick bumped me and nearly made me spill my drink. ‘You got heat?’ he asked.

‘What, like a Calor gas stove?’

‘You think you’re funny, don’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ I said back. ‘Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night just laughing all over my face.’

‘You see how funny it is when I put that stick up your arse.’

‘You can try, if that’s what turns you on, sweets,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t recommend it.’

I hoped I sounded tougher than I felt.

‘Knock it off, the pair of you,’ said Lupino.

I was willing but Rick wasn’t. ‘You stub your toe in the shower?’ he asked spitefully.

I was getting tired of him and so was his boss. ‘Rick, I said knock it off, I won’t tell you again,’ he said.

‘Do what the man says or Santa won’t pop down your chimney next week,’ I said.

‘And you,’ said Lupino.

Rick and I both glared at each other and retired from the fray unhurt.

The drugs and booze were beginning to screw up my peripheral vision. I kept seeing hallucinations out of the corners of my eyes. They say when you stop taking it, it gets worse. My advice, don’t stop.

One of the hallucinations was sitting on a bar stool at the bottom of the short flight of steps. I hadn’t noticed her on my way in. I’d been too busy trying to walk forwards and watch my back at the same time. She was short, that was obvious. Her feet dangled at least nine inches off the deep red carpet and twined around the metal pole that supported the seat. She was white-skinned and bottle blonde, and the bottle was fighting a losing battle with the darkness of her body hair. So dark in fact that I could see a faint suggestion of a moustache on her top lip. Her hair was a yellow fuzz, dry and static-filled. She was big, broad-shouldered but soft. Her hundred and forty pounds was stuffed into a raspberry pink satin frock, so tight that the material was threatening to call time out at several pressure points along the side seams. The colour and cut of her dress flattered neither complexion nor figure. She was sipping at a cocktail whose colour exactly matched the shade of her frock. Her dumpy legs were encased in black fish net and the flesh bulged through the mesh like warm lard. I imagined the cellulite marching up the backs of her legs like footsteps in the snow.