Bloody London

by Reggie Nadelson

  A boombox pumped out rap music. On the balconies of the building, people screamed at the kids. One boy started throwing bottles into the fire.

  The glass shattered, the flames spurted higher. Sirens screamed. The pumping waa waa of the sirens was foreign, unnerving, like sirens in a war movie. Police cars were parked everywhere around the housing project. The sirens tore up the night and cracked any veneer of civility. The flames lit the faces of the boys; all of them were black. I saw now some of them were only nine or ten. Backlit, they looked like ash.

  Jack kept to the sidelines. His body tensed up. Arms stiff at his side, he walked slowly to one of the uniforms and spoke to him quietly.

  I got out of the car, leaned on the hood, watching. He turned back to me, and I said, “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ve just got to show my face for a few minutes and we can get the fuck out. They need a black face to show up when this kind of stuff happens. Calm the natives, so to speak.”

  “They got no one else?”

  Jack, heading towards the kids, turned around, his compact body, outlined by the flames. “At my level? In the Met – that’s NYPD to you, man – at my level, there’s no one else black.”

  I leaned against Jack’s car and watched him walk towards the fire. The white cops watched too. He talked to one of the boys, but I couldn’t hear, and then I saw another kid raise a knife. It happened fast. I saw the blade glint. I put my hand on my gun.

  A couple of white cops, faces raddled with anger, headed towards the kid with the knife. A wind had come up and it whipped the flames now. Jack was in front of the rest of the cops. He moved towards the kids; Jack looked like cannon fodder.

  Then it started raining.

  We sat in Jack’s car after that and the windshield wipers swiped at the car. He lit a cigarette, then pulled away from the waste ground. The fires were out. The kids had disappeared. So had the cops. All that was left was the garbage and the rain.

  I said again, “You OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “They’re tearing down the council flats – projects to you – to make way for new development, shutting out the poor. People are angry about it, but it’s the name of the game. Docklands is used up. They’re moving south, the development people, the property blokes. I don’t know why in the fuck anyone wants to live out here anyhow, on a piece of reclaimed marshlands that never drains. You get a bad storm, the place fucking floods over.”

  I didn’t care about the weather. I cared about the spectacle, the angry kids, Jack’s showing himself to them, the angry white cops. Jack had no weapon but he went in anyhow.

  “But how come you felt obliged, you personally?”

  “Another time, Artie, OK? I need that drink.” He glanced back at the desolate scene.

  Suddenly, a small white man pushed his face against the car window. Jack rolled it down. The man had a sweet moon-shaped face and no teeth and he held his hand out. “Can you help me out?” he said. Jack rolled the window back up and pulled away.

  “Bloody homeless. They’d be better off if they got themselves some work to do.” Jack grinned his beguiling grin. “You thought all black people were on the Left, did you? Me, I fucking loved Mrs Thatcher. On your bike. Get a job. My parents did it. My dad worked forty years for Ford. Us kids did it. No one gave us a handout. Never mind. Anyhow, this lot are OK. Pretty much the same as before. Same film studio, different head, you know? Business as usual. Which is a good thing.”

  “What lot?”

  “Government, man. You’re not into politics?”

  “Politics bore the shit out of me. I’m not interested.”

  “You will be. Politics, that is. You spend a little time here, you will be.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, I don’t give a fuck about British politics or any other kind.

  Jack changed his tone. “So, Artie, man, you going to buy me that drink or what?” He drove silently for a while, the streets opened up again. I could see the river.

  We closed the bar at one of the restaurants along the promenade. London was feeling like a night city to me, always dark and wet, but full of warm, light, boozy places, bars and pubs and restaurants and clubs where people congregated to cheer themselves up. Or maybe it was the company I’d been keeping since I got off the plane.

  Even while the waiters stacked the chairs, we stayed on, sitting in front of the window. Fog was coming in now and it ate up the river. The promenade was deserted. A thin stream of traffic was barely visible on the bridge.

  Jack was not completely comfortable with me, maybe it was the incident on the waste ground. He was a black cop in a white town. Maybe it was his meeting up with Lily. His eyes moved to the river then back to me. The sound of laughter from a couple of waiters working the other side of the room seemed to startle him.

  I said, “Something else on your mind?”

  He finished off his drink quickly and said, “Nothing I can think of. Look, about Lily Hanes. She didn’t tell you we’d met or about that party, did she?”

  I finished my drink and kept my mouth shut.

  Cotton was nervous and he stuttered some. “We met at the party. She’s a nice lady, Artie, but she’s messed up with a bunch of charity wankers who like to imagine they’re doing good things for poor people and I’m sorry for you.”

  “You got something to be sorry about?”

  “OK.” He reached for his drink and swallowed it down. “We almost had a scene. Now that’s the fucking truth, and I’m telling you because if you want my help on Pascoe, there has to be some trust between us. She was a little frightened. She was on painkillers and a little high, her leg all messed up and I’ve got some stuff I’m working out at home, but fucking nothing happened. Nothing. I swear to God. I’m a pretty big bastard but I’m not a big enough shit to sit here drinking with you if there was anything.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Well,” he said. “So tomorrow I’ll track down whatever I can on Pascoe for you, OK?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “I’ll help you where I can, man. But even if I got you attached formally, which there’s no point, you know you would not be allowed to do much, not to interrogate, for one thing, but most of all, no guns. We can welcome you, we can offer you all kinds of courtesy as a brother of the badge, so to speak – you like my phrasing?” He grinned. “Being as how you were a New York City detective, and my friend, but what’s the point of a formal attachment?”

  “I operate pretty much on my own. I’m here as a tourist. I’d just as soon keep it that way. What I’m looking for is who stopped Pascoe coming to London. Him, his wife, they were packed. Ready to go. There’s Russians in it hip deep. New York, we’ve got Russians manipulating real estate prices same as they eat borscht, and some of them wanted Tommy Pascoe dead. People are getting killed for living space and nobody who matters gets indicted.” I lit up one of my own cigarettes.

  “Here too. Plenty of them. Russians with money, the babes who drop a hundred thousand grand, that’s pounds, man, at Harrods in an afternoon, Russians that got a string of racehorses. Casinos. Some of them buying up the big houses that belonged to Arabs, up around Highgate, Hampstead, some in Mayfair and Knightsbridge.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I bet you’ll like this one. Since the Prime Minister went to visit Yeltsin in Moscow, we’ve got our KGB brothers walking the beat in London looking for Russian gangsters.”

  We laughed, and I thought of Geoffrey Gilchrist.

  “One thing you should know, Artie, you’ll forgive my sounding patronizing, is that London is a very small town. Very. Areas of relationship cross over that might be different from New York City. Politicians. Money. Lawyers. The aid business, you know, charity. Good works.” Jack’s tone was sardonic.

  “I want something on Phillip Frye real bad.”

  “I understand.” He looked at his watch. “Why don’t we pay Phillip
Frye a visit together tomorrow?”

  Jack’s phone rang. He wandered to the other side of the room while he talked. I got the check and paid for the drinks.

  Jack said, “I have to go.”

  I walked with him around the corner and watched while he got in his car, then leaned out the window. “Maybe we’ll play some golf.”

  I didn’t want to insult his game by saying I thought, Tiger Woods notwithstanding, golf’s a game for guys with prostate trouble, so I nodded.

  “And Nina’s hoping you’ll come round for supper too, next week? And Lily, of course, if you like. You’re all welcome.”

  Jack was trying hard, so I said, “I’ll let you know. About the golf. And dinner. Thanks.”

  “Roast lamb, the works.”

  “Nina doesn’t cook Caribbean?”

  “Nina?” Jack laughed. “She’s as English as it gets. You think I wanted to marry my mum? Christ, when I met Nina and she told her old man she was marrying a black chappie, the next time I went to call, her dad met me at the front gate with a shotgun. You think I’m joking? Like I said, this is England. They can change the labels all they want, old Britain, new Britain, it’s always the smell of England getting up your nostrils.”

  “Yeah. So thanks. Hey, it’s good to meet you, you know?”

  He backed out of the alley, then before he turned towards the street, he stopped and leaned on his horn to get my attention. I went after him.

  “Jack?”

  He said, “Tell me for sure you’re not thinking about carrying some kind of weapon, Art.”

  “For sure, Jack.”

  “You do that, I can’t help you. You carry a gun, you put yourself in real jeopardy here in London, OK?”

  “Yes,” I said and he put his foot on the pedal and disappeared.

  26

  I didn’t wait for Jack Cotton the next day when I barged into the renovated warehouse where Frye had his office. Jack had other business and I didn’t want him knowing I had a gun in my pocket.

  A brass plate on the wall of Frye’s warehouse was engraved with the words “Charity begins at HOME”. There was an outline of Warren Pascoe’s begging hands. The building in an area named Rotherhithe consisted of two warehouses joined by a courtyard with a view of the river. It wasn’t far from Warren Pascoe’s studio and the pub where I had eaten lunch the day before. Over the front door were security cameras.

  The lobby was designed to play off the Victorian warehouse it had been: high ceilings, wooden pigeonholes on one wall, a long front desk, a corrugated tin roof overhead where you could hear the rain. The receptionist behind the desk was probably seventy and volunteered her name. Ida Pink, she said and told me to wait, then returned to her main occupation which was egging on a black handyman. He was on his knees, cutting with a pocket knife the frayed cord on a battered electric heater.

  Somewhere through a sound system Sting was singing “An Englishman in New York”.

  Princess Diana in Capri pants and a land-mine shield inspecting a blasted hut with Phillip Frye. Crippled kids shaking hands with Phillip Frye. Frye with Nelson Mandela. Jimmy Carter in a hardhat with a hammer on a building site, putting up a house, and next to him Phillip Frye. The waiting room at home, Frye’s organization, was a shrine to Phil Frye, the stuff of a self-made saint, an icon of do-good, a right-on guy who believed he could save the world. No wonder he had a grip on Lily she couldn’t shake.

  I looked at the wall again: Frye was pictured at Paul Newman’s cancer camp where he apparently donated housing materials. There wasn’t anyone or any place on the planet where Philly Frye didn’t help out, not when it came to housing, not when it came to shelters.

  Phillip Frye and Thomas Pascoe. A perfect pair. Maybe I was just feeling sour, seeing as how Frye knew Lily a lot longer and better than I ever did; maybe I was just pissed off about that.

  “Keith and Mick over there,” said Ida Pink. “Gimme shelter, you know,” she said. “You can sit down if you want.”

  I ignored Ida and headed up a flight of stairs. At the top of it, in a large square room with windows that looked out on to the central courtyard were four women. They sat, all of them, in front of computers, with phones in their hands, all chattering in the phones and at each other like birds that landed on the same branch and enjoyed the company. Punching keyboards, drinking coffee, two of them smoking. They were in their twenties. Dressed in black. All of them pretty, a black woman in corn-rows with colored beads that jiggled, an Asian with long hair, two white girls with studs in their tongues and commas of hair over their eyes. Who was it who said age and treachery sure beats youth and exuberance?

  In that room, where the walls were covered with bright posters advertising HOME, there was so much youth and exuberance that all I wanted was a Scotch.

  A couple of doors led off the room, and one swung open now. A tall woman with a big ambitious mouth and a short leather skirt strode through it and looked me over. She introduced herself. Prudence Vane, she said. In charge of PR, she added. I asked her where Frye was. She nodded toward the other door and when I opened it and stuck my head in, I saw Phillip Frye. He was on the phone.

  Frye lifted off from his chair, but kept on talking, the phone under his chin. He shook my hand with the regular guy shake of a rugby player. I remembered that about him, the one time we had met. He gestured to a chair.

  I’d met Frye once, at a party on Long Island. He worked in New York for a while; he ran a publishing company. He had a long ruddy face with a high forehead and curly brown hair that was turning gray. The hair was too long, the face was cheerful and closed.

  He had Thomas Pascoe’s forehead and nose, but Pascoe’s was an international British face – the silver hair, the polished look. Frye’s face was old fashioned and secretive. Now he put the receiver back on the phone and shook my hand for the second time.

  “Artie Cohen, isn’t it? Good to see you again. We met in East Hampton, didn’t we? Yes, I was still in New York then, I do remember, of course. Coffee?”

  The Asian girl appeared with a tray and two mugs. The coffee was lukewarm. The instant brew had been made under a tap and undissolved crystals floated on the milky surface. I put the mug on Phil’s desk. He didn’t mention Lily. Neither did I.

  The three windows in Frye’s office looked on to the river. Inside, the room was jammed with books, floor to ceiling, and there was promotional material on every surface.

  Modern leather chairs were heaped with posters, brochures, boxes. The tables held tangled computer gear and empty coffee cups. Under the windows was some kind of plastic tent about ten feet long, six feet high, and Frye, following my gaze, ambled over to show it off. His socks didn’t match. His shoes were brown and suede. I felt better.

  “Come and look at this. This is going to change the world, actually. It’s the Life Bubble. It’s a portable living space for the homeless, or refugees. It’s insulated like a thermos, warm in winter, cool in hot climates. You can hook it up and filter clean air in environmental emergencies. It folds up flat, it weighs only a few pounds, it fits in a backpack, it’s cheap to make, it’s weather resistant. It’s quite brilliant, don’t you think so?” Behind the little round glasses with steel rims, his eyes shone like a convert.

  Frye, who wore a pin-striped suit with bell-bottom pants and a nylon velvet shirt, foraged in a box on the floor, pulled out a green bottle of white wine, opened it and poured some in two sticky glasses he found on his desk.

  He offered one to me, the phone rang again, he picked it up, talking, pacing, flexing his hands back and forth. He was charged up like someone stuck him into a socket. He talked beautiful English, though, rippling, elegant, lustrous; he talked it in whole paragraphs, like a talking book. He finished the call, and said, “I’m sorry,” picked up the glass and drank the wine.

  “Look,” he said, as if he had finally clocked my presence. “Maybe you can help me. Someone’s stealing from this office, blueprints for projects, my personal notes, address books.
Stealing donors’ names. You’ve no idea how difficult it all is these days, people moving on to your turf.”

  “Turf?”

  “There are some of my contributors, if they think their names have been sold on, will leave me, and God knows there are plenty of other charities with their hands out.” He looked at me. “But you’re not interested in a minor theft, are you? I’ve got the wrong policeman.” He laughed. “You haven’t come over from New York to help me track down an address book, have you, Artie? What can I really do for you?”

  I said, “Tell me about your relationship with Thomas Pascoe. Uncle Tommy, wasn’t it?” I shoved a pile of books on the floor and sat on a leather chair. There was a full pack of cigarettes in my jacket.

  “He gave us money.”

  “For this bubble thing?”

  “Yes. Can we walk if you’re going to smoke? I want some air,” he said.

  “It’s raining.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I care.”

  He shoved open the window.

  I stubbed the smoke out in the wine glass.

  Frye said, “I put Tommy Pascoe on my board.”

  “He came to the meetings. Here? In London?”

  “Yes. Always. It made him feel important. And he was quite useful, but I had to keep it quiet.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Some of my more left-wing members didn’t approve of Uncle Tommy.”

  “But he had the dough.”

  “Yes. Exactly.”

  “You were named in the will, I heard.” I wasn’t sure, not until I said it, I was trying it out. But Frye nodded, and I thought: Bingo!

  “Yes, I was. Thank God. We need the money. I just hope to Christ it doesn’t take too long to expedite.” Frye pulled a jacket off a hook and said, “Come on. I’ll show you something interesting and you can smoke all you like.”