The Long Glasgow Kiss (20 page)

‘Naw … no’ qvite. Zey made oot zat zey vere just interested in finding oot vat vey it vood vork. Zey vere a couple of vee bambots acting ze big bollogs, like I zaid. I got ze impression zat zey didn’t have ze money to lay a big bet, but zey vere expectink to get ze money.’

‘Where from?’ I asked and only through a monumental effort resisted the impulse to turn my ‘w’ into a ‘v’.

‘Vuck knows, Lennogs. I zink zey vere just talkin’ shite. Ken vat I mean?’

‘But they were talking about placing a bet
against
Bobby Kirkcaldy?’

‘Naw … I didnae zay zat. Zey didnae zay vat vay zey vanted to bet. Zey just vanted to know who vould take on a big bet like zat. I didnae pay zat much attention tae zem, tae be honest. Like I zaid, zey vere just a couple o’ vee vankers talking shite, like.’

‘And what did you tell them?’

‘Zat it vould be me vot vould broker a big bet like that. Get ze big buoys involved. Me or Zmall Change MacFarlane. But zat vas bevore Zmall Change got his coupon stoved in.’

‘Small Change MacFarlane?’ I felt a tingle in my scalp.

‘Aye … ’course I vould normally zend zem to Zmall Change. But ze only bet Zmall Change iz takin’ now is who’z next to get it up ze arze viz ze devil’s pitchfork …’ Tony chuckled more than giggled this time.

‘Have the police been to see you since the murder?’

‘The Polis? Naw … zey dinae bother wiz me. As far as zey’re concerned I’ve nae got a record. Zey dinnae know half ze shite I’ve been up to. And everybody kens zat I’m straight noo.’

‘So these two young wideboys … do you know who they are? Did you recognize them?’

‘Naw. A couple ov vucking Flash Harrys, iv you azk me. Didn’t pay much attention to zem, ken vot I mean?’

‘Okay, thanks, Tony.’ I shook his hand and made to leave. Something occurred to me and I turned back to the short, smiling Pole. ‘What do you know about Jack Collins? He was Small Change’s partner in a couple of businesses.’

‘Aye … Did you know he vos also MacFarlane’s bairn? Illegitimate bairn? Zmall Change and Mamma Collins had been playin’ a vee game ov hide-ze-
kielbasa
, as vee used tae zay back in ze ol’ country.’

‘Was that common knowledge?’

‘Oh aye … Everybody knew zat. I’ve never had vuck all to do vid young Collins, zough.’

‘One other thing. Bobby Kirkcaldy has a minder of sorts. Claims he’s his uncle …’

‘Oh aye … I ken zat old
skurvysyn
vell.’

‘
Skurvysyn?
’ I asked. I had been concentrating hard, untangling the Breslau from the Glasgow in each of Tony’s utterances, but he’d taken me beyond any recognizable landmark.

‘Aye …
skurvysyn
. Bad vord in Polish. How do you zay in English? Fucker … no. Zat’s no’ right. Arzehole … Maybes. Vanker? No, zat iznae right eezer. Zon of a Bitch …’

‘All right, I get it Tony …’ I held my hands up. ‘What do you know about him?’

‘Just zat he’s a bad bastart. Bare kinuckle fighter vay back ven. Zen he vos a fixer. Used to fix boxing matches by scaring ze shite out ov fighters. Bad vee bastart no mistake. But zere’s no vay he vould be involved in fixing up Kirkcaldy’s fight. Or at least so zat it vent against Kirkcaldy. He kens vat side his vucking bread iss buddered.’

‘Thanks, Tony. See you around.’

‘Vaddya zay? Vaddya hear? Eh, Lennogs?’

I left the beaming Pole behind his counter. I still hadn’t got anywhere, but someone was playing with the light switch in that small, dark room at the back of my brain.

I tried Lorna again from a call box. Still no answer. I was becoming seriously concerned and I decided that once I’d done all I had to do that day, I’d take a drive down to Pollokshields and see what, as Tony would have put it,
voz occurin’.

I drove up into Partick, parked on Thornwood Drive and walked to Craithie Court. There was a pleasant, late afternoon light and I had that cloyingly melancholy feeling again. The Young Women’s Hostel in Craithie Court was off Thornwood at the top of a gentle hill and I had a view down the street, a corridor of sandstone tenements, to where the forest of cranes marked the edge of the Clyde. There were more cars parked in the streets here and cars were beginning to change the shape of the area. For the last six years there had been plans to dig a tunnel under the Clyde to make it easier to move from north to south. Whether the local inhabitants were keen that Govan, on the opposite bank of the Clyde, should have such ease of access to Partick was something I couldn’t comment on.

When I got to the Hostel, I knocked on the administrative office door. Difficult though it was to believe, I did have some hard and fast moral codes and rules of behaviour, one of which was that I would never hit a woman. The matron who answered the door was one of the best arguments for my moral stance I had encountered. Burly isn’t an adjective normally attached to women, but it stuck to the hostel matron like crap to a shirt-tail and I would never have hit a woman like her for fear she might hit me back. She was dressed in a dark grey suit of tweed so abrasive that I was sure some religious order somewhere must use it for mortification.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked. I didn’t answer right away, mesmerized as I was by the way her eyebrows knitted themselves together above the bridge of her nose and by the rich baritone of her voice. I explained that I was looking for Claire Skinner, and that it was business-related.

‘Then you’ll have to arrange to meet her somewhere else. No male visitors here.’

Such steadfast but ill-placed guardianship of virginity brought to mind empty stables with locked doors. I brought all of my weapons to bear on Hairy Mary, including my not-inconsiderable homespun Canadian charm. None of them worked on her and she raised an eyebrow, or more correctly one half of her cyclopean eyebrow in weary disdain. I decided, because I had a Plan B up my sleeve, to drop it for the moment. I shrugged as if it had been no skin off my nose but big trouble for someone else and made to leave. She let me. She’d seen that trick, along with all the others, before.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

I drove back into town and parked the Atlantic in Buchanan Street where I could have a clear view of the Alpha Hotel’s main entrance. It was sixish when I parked and it was another half hour before Devereaux arrived back. He was dropped off by a marked police Wolseley: if Devereaux was a private detective and the City of Glasgow Police was extending him this kind of courtesy, then I decided it would be a good idea for me to change my brand of cologne. I certainly was doing something wrong.

Devereaux got out of the car and trotted into the hotel. I gave him a couple of minutes to get into his room then locked the Atlantic, crossed the street and walked into the lobby.

The desk clerk was a small dark man of about forty who smiled welcomingly at me despite the fact that he was small, forty and a desk clerk.

‘Can I help you, sir?’ he asked, still smiling.

‘Yeah, you sure can,’ I grinned back. I hammed up my accent a bit. Generally Brits couldn’t tell me from an American, providing I avoided diphthongs. Americans pronounced diphthongs flatly; we positively yodelled them. Linguists called it Canadian Raising. The Americans just called it Canuck. ‘I’m looking for a buddy of mine,’ I said, dodging diphthongs. ‘Dex Devereaux from Vermont. He’s registered here I think.’

‘Yes sir. Do you want me to send a boy to his room to tell him you’re here?’

‘Before we do that, I just want to make sure I got the right Dex Devereaux. If it is he’ll have been booked into the hotel from Washington DC, is that right?’

The clerk continued to smile. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t give out that kind of information.’

‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘I quite understand.’ I took three pound notes from my wallet and laid them on the reception desk, my fingers pinning them to the mahogany.

‘I believe you are correct,’ said the clerk, still smiling, and the notes were gone. ‘Shall I send a message?’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned and saw Devereaux standing behind me. He must have been waiting in the lobby. ‘Hey there,
Johnny Canuck
… Your surveillance skills stink,’ he said and looped a firm, guiding arm through mine. ‘Let’s take a walk.’

We headed out of the hotel and Devereaux suggested we take my car. As he did so he waved a hand vaguely in the Atlantic’s direction. My guess was that he had spotted it, or me, from the back of the police car that had dropped him off.

‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.

‘Somewhere quiet,’ he replied, without letting the smile drop from his face. ‘Where we can talk.’

Ten minutes later we were parked beneath a sheltering arch of trees on Kelvin Way where it dissected Kelvingrove Park.

‘Nice day for a walk,’ said Devereaux as he got out of the car. I followed, locking up the doors. He led the way into the park and in the direction of the museum and art gallery until we found a tree-shaded bench. Devereaux was in a suit of exactly the same style and cut as he had worn the night he’d called at my flat with Jock Ferguson, except this time it was blue. Several shades too light a blue for a local ever to have worn. I imagined it would have looked okay in the swelter of a New York summer, but amongst the muted tones of tweed- and serge-bound Glasgow, it was the sartorial equivalent of a screeching jazz trumpet played through a loudspeaker.

‘So you thought you’d try to find out who booked my hotel room for me?’ he said, and placed the straw trilby on the bench next to him, exposing the precision engineering of his flat-top haircut. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and drew it across his brow before putting the trilby back on.

‘This is all very Graham Greene,’ I said. ‘Parleys in parks, that kind of thing.’

‘Did you think that was how to work out who had sent me here?’ Devereaux ignored my diversion. ‘My client?’

‘Your client?’ It came out almost a snort. ‘If you have a client, then their motto is
Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity
.’

Devereaux laughed and eyed me as if appraising me. There was a hint of respect in his gaze. Also a hint of the lion appraising the antelope.

‘Yep, Jock Ferguson was right,’ said Devereaux. ‘You are a smart cookie. Okay, you got me.’

‘So what do I call you?’ I asked. ‘
Special Agent
Devereaux?’

‘Dex will still do just fine. And what we talked about the other night was all true.’

‘So what in hell’s name is so important about John Largo that the FBI send one of their finest on a tub all the way over to Glasgow.’

‘Actually I flew. To London. I took the train up here. And John Largo
is
that important. Seeing as you’re so all-fired curious about me, and seeing as you enjoy an interesting relationship with the local law enforcement, I thought it would be good for you and me to have a talk without Jock Ferguson present.’ Devereaux stood up and we started to walk through the park.

‘You don’t trust Jock?’ I asked.

‘I’m just cautious, that’s all.’

‘Yet you’re prepared to trust me?’

Devereaux laughed. ‘Now, there’s a question: do you trust a man who doesn’t really trust himself? Well, let me tell you, Lennox, you’re an interesting kind of guy. You’ll have guessed that I’ve been through everything that’s on file about you. War record.
Post
-war record. I know that you deal with crooks. I know that you’ve done the odd crooked thing yourself. And I know more than you might think I would know about everything that happened last year.’

I said nothing. He probably did know more than I’d like. More than Jock Ferguson knew; or was sure that he knew.

‘Like I said, I saw your war record. I know what it was like to have your kind of war. I was with the First Ranger Battalion. That’s one of the reasons I put myself forward to come over here … I know Scotland. I trained here with the British Commandos before Omaha Beach.’

Again, I said nothing. Everybody had a war story.

‘I also know about the …’ Devereaux paused, looking somewhere in the park’s trees for the right word. ‘ …
difficulties
you got into towards the end of your war service. The accusations about black-market dealing. And I know all about your German associate ending up face down in Hamburg harbour.’ Devereaux stopped in the path and turned to me. ‘Do you know what I see, Lennox? I see a man who can be trusted for the best reason of them all. Money. I don’t know what schemes Ferguson has going. Maybe none. But it looks to me like every second cop in this city is on the take. I’d be pretty sure that Largo has a couple in his pocket. So here’s the deal: I’ll pay you for anything I can use to get Largo. You give me the goods that lead me to him and I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. That’s over and above anything you make on the side from the cases you’re investigating. It should also be enough to resolve any conflicts of interest, should they arise.’

‘That’s an interesting offer, Dex …’ All of a sudden I felt comfortable using his first name: promises of large sums of money tended to make me more amenable to widening my social circle. ‘But, to be honest, a lot of people have been paying me to find people. So far my batting average has been pretty lousy.’

‘You don’t need to find him, Lennox. Just get enough to point me in the right direction.’ He led on and I followed. A woman in a flared shirtwaister dress and winged sunglasses pushed a pram the size of a taxi past us. Devereaux lifted his hat to her and I followed suit. We were pretty elegant for a couple of New World Joes.

‘You still haven’t told me why he is so important,’ I said. ‘What did he do: steal George Washington’s wooden teeth from the Smithsonian?’

‘When we met at your apartment the other night, I told you how Largo has built up a chain of supply across three continents. It’s a very, very impressive operation. But what’s even more impressive is the vision behind it. You and I saw all kinds of hell in the war, I’d say, but John Largo has a vision of the future that would give us new nightmares. Have you heard of a narcotic called heroin?’

‘I’ve heard of it,’ I said. ‘It was used in the war instead of morphine. I’ve heard of people getting hooked on it, but it’s less addictive than morphine, I believe. That’s why they used it.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. That’s where everyone behind heroin got it wrong. It was created as a less addictive alternative but it actually creates a higher dependency among those who use it. That’s not been a problem. Here in England it’s still legal and a prescribed medicine. If your kid has a cough that won’t go away, the doctor will write you a script for a dose of heroin drops. In fact, the authorities here only started to keep a record of heroin addicts this year. There are just short of four hundred recorded addicts in Britain. Almost all are doctors or connected to the medical profession. You don’t have a problem here. But in the States we do, and it’s getting bigger. Heroin has been controlled since the Harrison Act and we made it completely illegal more than twenty years ago.’

He paused as a couple of young men in shabby business suits walked past.

‘I work out of the Bureau’s New York office. Last year, in Harlem, New York City, we saw a rapid spread of the illegal supply of heroin. This summer we have an epidemic on our hands … an epidemic of negroes injecting themselves with this stuff.’

‘So this is Largo’s business. He’s the one who’s supplying it to the blacks?’

Devereaux shook his head. ‘John Largo is supplying the people who supply the negroes. The Syndicate. But Largo’s not the only one supplying the Syndicate. Glasgow isn’t the main supply port, and Largo isn’t the only exporter.’

‘Who’s the competition?’ I asked.

‘Corsicans. Between you and me there’s a rumour that Uncle Sam did a deal with the Corsican Mafia to keep the commies out of Marseille. Uncle Sam in the form of the CIA. The flip-side of the deal is that the same Corsicans are running heroin from French Indochina to Turkey and into Marseille and supplying the stuff to the New York Syndicate. The story is that Largo uses a different route and the stuff ends up here in Glasgow. Then it’s shipped to the States.’

For a moment, I considered what Devereaux was saying. I leaned back on the bench, hooking my elbows over the back and tilting the brim of my Borsalino to let the sun bathe my face.

‘So why are you here and not in Marseille? Sounds to me like Largo is small fry in comparison to these Corsicans.’

‘He’s not. Anything but. Largo represents serious opposition, and the Corsicans don’t take kindly to opposition. Trust me, John Largo has more to fear from his swarthy islander competitors than he does from law enforcement. Fact is the Syndicate is largely made up of Neapolitan and Sicilian families. There’s some kind of animosity between the Italians and Corsicans. The Corsicans are the wrong type of Guinea or something, I guess. And Largo has been undercutting their prices. So, he’s slowly been carving out a bigger share of the US market.’

‘How did you find out about him?’

A couple of young women walked past and we again raised our hats. The girls laughed in a stupid way and walked on. No class, I thought. The one nearest to me had on a white linen skirt so lightweight that the sun shone through, outlining her thighs and hips. No class but nice ass.

‘Six months ago I got a lead,’ said Devereaux. ‘The Italians don’t talk because of their omertà, but they have to work with others. In the Syndicate and out of it. They’ve been setting up a network of coloured middlemen throughout Harlem. One of them was a guy called Jazzy Johnson, who also happened to be one of my snitches. Johnson wasn’t able to pass on information of any quality because they never told him anything more than the barest minimum he needed to know. But what made Jazzy a good snitch was the way he was all ears and he told me everything he could pick up. One of the things he overheard was a conversation about an overdue shipment that was coming from Glasgow, and the name John Largo was mentioned.’ Devereaux shrugged. ‘That’s it … not much to go on, but at least I was able to put the name to a figure we knew was operating in Europe. Still not much information there except he was an ex-soldier …’

‘Ain’t we all?’ I interrupted.

‘Sure, but Largo is supposed to be some kind of ex-professional. You know, career-type soldier.’

‘Which army?’

‘Don’t know. US, Canadian … maybe even British. The start of the supply chain has to be out in the Far East and it could be that John Largo started out in some Brit colony like Hong Kong. Or fought the Japs rather than the Krauts. Wherever he did his fighting and whoever he did it for, the rumours are that he is one deadly son-of-a-gun. There’s been a lot of blood spilt across Asia and Europe just setting this thing up.’ Devereaux stopped again and looked around the park. ‘Say, do you think we could do this wet?’

I looked at my watch. ‘The pubs are open. I know a place near here …’

There tends to be an architectural style or design vernacular that unites buildings used for a common, specific purpose. Glasgow bars seemed to be themed
eternal gloom
. Where there were windows, the glass was frosted or misted for the twin purposes of concealing the earnest business of Scottish drinking from the outside world and to attenuate any sunlight into an insipid milky-white bloom.

We didn’t speak further about Largo or the FBI all the way through the park and onto the main road. Instead, we talked about Vermont and New Brunswick. Different sides of the border but pretty much the same way of life and pretty much the same way of looking at life. A few heads had turned in our direction when we entered the gloom of the bar, but we were ignored once we had ordered a couple of whiskies and sat over at a corner table away from the smattering of other customers.

‘So your informant. Can’t he find out any more about Largo?’

‘He can’t find out anything about anything any more.’

I raised an eyebrow but Devereaux shook his head. ‘Bar fight. The same old crap … about a woman, or a spilt drink, or a remark. He took a knife in the ribs.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, and a fleeting thought that Glasgow was maybe twinned with Harlem fleeted. ‘And you have no other leads?’