by T. M. Logan
I did a slow, careful check of the poker tables. Not there either. My eyes were drawn to another bouncer at the back of the room, standing in front of heavy black curtains, black double doors beyond. A small bronze plaque on the wall said, “Executive Lounge.”
That would be where the high rollers would be. Free drinks, attentive service, the prettiest dealers, somewhere a little bit separate from the hoi polloi. I strolled over as if I were a regular. The bouncer here was a few inches shorter than I was, but broader and heavier, solid with muscle, the shoulders of his dinner jacket strained taut. He had very short blond hair and eyes like chips of blue ice.
I moved to step past him, and he put a big hand on my chest like a policeman stopping traffic.
“The executive lounge is members only, sir.”
“I am a member.”
He gave me a little smile. “No. You’re not.” His broad Sunderland accent was calm and quiet and all the more menacing for it.
“Listen, I just need to go in there for a minute. I’m looking for my friend Ben. A group of us were out earlier and we got separated. We were going to meet up here.”
The bouncer appeared utterly unmoved.
“It’s his birthday,” I added.
“Members only,” he said again.
“I just need half a minute. That’s all. Just to check he got here OK.”
The bouncer’s head swiveled an inch toward me. “You tried calling him?”
“He’s got it switched off.”
“Bad luck, that.”
The bouncer moved aside to let a miniskirted waitress through carrying a tray with a bottle of Moët champagne and four glasses. I watched her disappear behind the curtain, perfect poise on four-inch heels.
As the double doors closed behind her, I heard a laugh like Ben’s from the other side, a barking half shout, loud with alcohol and alpha-male self-confidence.
A week ago, I would have been angry that Ben was sitting in there on the other side of the curtain, drinking champagne and gambling and laughing while my freedom hung by a thread thanks to him. But in the last day or two, I had started to become used to it. I expected it. Expected things to happen that would underline the fact that life wasn’t fair. The point was to stop whining and acknowledge it, embrace it, take advantage of it.
Law of the jungle, baby.
I was starting to think like Ben.
“How do I become a member?” I said to the bouncer. His nose had been broken at least once, and I wondered what had happened to the man who’d done it.
He pointed a thick index finger toward the exit. “Front desk.”
“Then I can play at a table in there?”
“Yeah.”
“Great.” I turned to go.
“But registration takes twenty-four hours.”
I turned back. “Sorry?”
“It takes twenty-four hours for your registration to be processed. Then you can play.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Company policy.”
“But I have money to spend and the tables out here are no good—stakes too low.”
“Twenty-four hours,” he repeated.
“Well, that is a real shame.”
The bouncer regarded me for a moment, ice-chip eyes unblinking. “Who’s your friend?”
“What?”
“Your friend inside. What’s his name?”
“Ben Delaney.”
His expression gave nothing away, but I could see the name meant something to him.
“Is he in there?” I said.
“Are you a copper?” An edge of suspicion in his voice.
“No, just a friend from London. But I’m worried about him.”
“I’m sure your friend’ll be out sooner or later, sir.”
“What time do you close?”
“Four A.M.”
Crap. That was almost four hours.
I went to the front desk but had the same answer from the duty supervisor, a lad in his early twenties with floppy blond hair and an adolescent beard. He put a form on the counter in front of me, with a pen.
“There you go, sir. Takes twenty-four hours to process.”
Through a glass panel in the door behind him, an older man in a suit was talking on the phone in a small office, one hand on his hip.
“Can you give me a temporary pass for the executive lounge for tonight?”
“Sorry, we don’t do that.”
“Could I speak to the manager, then?” I pointed at the man in the back office. “Would you be able to fetch him for me?”
The lad looked past me, over my shoulder, as if hoping there would be a less annoying customer for him to speak to instead of me. Finally, he accepted that I wasn’t going to go away.
“Hold on just a minute, sir.”
He turned and disappeared through the door into the back office.
My options were running out. They weren’t going to make an exception to the rule. And if I couldn’t go in, Ben would have to come out.
There was a small red box on the wall behind the front desk.
White text on a black background: “Break Glass—Press Here.”
Law of the jungle.
The supervisor had his back to me in the back office. He was still talking to the manager, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in my direction. A few people were milling about in the foyer, a couple walking in, a group of young women leaving to go on somewhere else, loud with booze and laughter.
I leaned forward over the front counter and smashed the glass of the fire alarm.
68
The alarm erupted instantly, a piercing two-tone sound that was so loud it set my teeth on edge. I ducked away from the desk and out of sight just as the supervisor came rushing through from the back office.
I didn’t think he’d seen me. But it didn’t matter. This wouldn’t take long.
The house lights came on.
Pushing my way through the tide of people coming out, I selected the camera on my phone and got ready to snatch a picture. Looking out for Ben to come toward me in the surge of punters heading for the front exit. Imagining the moment, surely only a few seconds away now, when we would be face-to-face again. I would grab him with one hand, snap a picture with the other. The look on his face would be priceless. And then it would be my turn to post a picture on Facebook—right after I’d sent it to the police, my lawyer, and his wife.
“Everybody out,” the bouncers were saying loudly and without much enthusiasm, waving people toward the front door.
On the main gambling floor, two side fire exits had opened up onto the parking lot, cold midnight air rolling in. Shit. I’d assumed everyone would go out of the front door. Wincing against the harsh whine of the fire alarm and taking their drinks with them, tonight’s gamblers shuffled toward the fire exits as I moved to stand in the small shadows that remained by the blackjack tables. My eyes were fixed on the exit to the executive lounge. A couple of middle-aged dark-haired men emerged through the doors, pulling on leather jackets. They spoke loudly to each other over the wail of the alarm. A Slavic language I didn’t recognize, maybe Russian. One gave a cigarette to the other and put another cigarette in his own mouth, and they headed for the fire exit.
I waited by the door of the executive lounge, ready to snap a picture of Ben when he came through. The blue-eyed bouncer reappeared, looking at me like I wasn’t right in the head. He took me firmly by the elbow, walking me out of the fire exit and into the parking lot.
“Everybody out, sir,” he said loudly above the noise of the fire alarm.
The cold October air was like a slap in the face after the casino’s warmth. It was obvious that I’d not been quick enough: Ben must have gone out through one of the side exits before I’d gotten back through the crowd of people near the front desk.
There must have been a couple of hundred people in the parking lot, lit up in the glare of security lights, and Ben was somewhere among them. I started walking slowly through the ass
embled group, scanning left and right, phone at the ready to take a picture. He was here somewhere. I had worked my way from one side of the group to the other and was about to work my way in deeper when I saw the blue-eyed bouncer staring at me, brows knitted into a deep frown. By his side, the supervisor from the front desk was talking to him, close in his ear, pointing at me. I turned away and pushed into the crowd again.
That was when I saw him. Twenty-five feet away, his back to me. Dark hair, five feet eight, smart jacket. Smoking a cigarette, as usual.
I barged someone out of the way and pushed through a group of people, eyes fixed on the back of Ben’s head. Abruptly, the fire alarm ceased, leaving a deafening quiet broken by a little cheer from the shivering crowd of gamblers assembled in the parking lot. They started to move toward the doors, obscuring my view. I shouldered someone else out of my path. Almost there. He was definitely the right build, right height, right hair.
The bastard started walking quickly away from me, without even looking around. I held my cell phone up above the crowd and pressed the shutter to take a picture. So close—
A strong hand on my shoulder pulled me abruptly backward, and I stumbled, just about managing to keep my balance. The iron grip belonged to a hugely muscular bouncer with a flat-top haircut and Celtic tattoos up the side of his neck. Steven Beecham, I thought but didn’t say. It’s him. Another hand—the blue-eyed bouncer I’d spoken to earlier—grabbed my other arm, and together they marched me backward, stumbling, almost falling, into the alley at the side of the casino. A few in the crowd watched with interest as I was marched off, but most were more interested in getting back inside, back into the warmth of the bar and the tables and the action.
As soon as we were far enough up the alley to be out of sight of the other customers, Blue Eyes spun me around and punched me in the face before I could get a word out. I had never been hit so hard. It was like getting belted with a cricket bat.
My head spun with the punch, and my mouth was flooded with the warm salty taste of blood. I staggered backward but stayed on my feet.
“Fuck off back to London,” the blue-eyed bouncer said.
Beecham stood next to him, his huge hands balling into fists.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. A back tooth felt loose. I spat blood.
“You know what happens,” Beecham said, “when you pull the fucking fire alarm and all the customers end up in the parking lot?”
“Listen, guys, I’m just trying to find my—”
“The customers stop spending money. And the boss gets upset.”
“And then this happens.”
“I’m looking for Ben D—”
Then it was Beecham’s turn to hit me, and everything went black.
69
Pain.
Awake.
Not in bed. Not indoors, even. Outside. Dark.
Hard pavement. Wet.
A bright throbbing pain in my jaw and the side of my head.
My cheek pressed against rough gravel.
I blinked, winced, sat up with a groan. Fought back a feeling of nausea. Put a hand to my face and it came away sticky with blood. I was in an alleyway at the side of the casino, big trash cans lined up side by side against the wall. The mingling smells of piss and fresh rain and rotting food, the October cold keen as a blade. My ribs were raw with pain. Evidently the casino bouncers had given me a bit of a kicking into the bargain, after knocking me out. How long had I been unconscious? Ten minutes? An hour? It was hard to figure out.
Brushing the gravel off my face, I got gingerly to my feet, the world still spinning. Walked unsteadily out of the alleyway and saw that the crowds in the parking lot had gone. The casino doors were shut, faint sounds of music coming from inside. For a moment I thought about trying to get back into the casino, but one look through the front windows into the foyer told me that wasn’t going to work. The blue-eyed bouncer was there, staring at me. He saw me looking and shook his head slowly, definitively. Not tonight, mate.
My cell phone. I had taken a picture of Ben in the parking lot, just before the bouncers grabbed me. Maybe this is it. A little buzz of excitement pushing through the pain in my head. I called up the image gallery and found a dark, blurry shot of heads and upturned faces, half smears of color, not enough light for a clear picture. Ben’s head turned to the left. I double-tapped on the screen to zoom in on his face, studying the hairline, the jaw, the shape of his nose. Could it be? Looking closer, I frowned. It was hard to tell because of the quality of the image, but the harder I stared at it, the less sure I was that it was him. I held it closer, my hope disappearing.
The guy in my picture had a beard. It wasn’t Ben after all.
I stabbed the screen to delete the picture, swearing loudly enough to startle two girls skittering past in the tiniest of miniskirts.
The street was deserted. No taxis. I googled nearby hotels, picked a Travelodge that was nearest according to the GPS, and started walking in that direction, back toward the city center. Going to the police would waste time—and in any case, they’d probably think I’d gotten what I deserved. There was also the possibility that Naylor had put out a warrant for my arrest. Too risky. A group of teenage lads was coming toward me, a loose gang walking up the middle of the street, all in T-shirts despite the cold and eating french fries out of white polystyrene trays. Heckling one another in voices loud with beer and bravado. One of them saw the fresh marks on my face and gave me a knowing grin. I looked away and moved on past, hands jammed in my pockets, through the dark streets of this unfamiliar city. A siren, the noise piercing like a stiletto. Blue flashing lights reflecting off the glass front of an office building made me duck into an alleyway, between two shops closed and shuttered for the night. I stumbled forward into the shadows and crouched behind a dumpster, listening to the rise and fall of the siren getting nearer. It seemed to stop, then started again, then flashed past on the street and was gone. I waited for a minute in case more police were coming. Then another minute.
I felt more alone than ever. Adrift in a strange city, I knew no one and belonged nowhere. I certainly didn’t belong here. My aim had been to find Ben, but I’d found a beating instead.
I checked into the hotel, ignoring the stares of the night receptionist when he saw the state of my face, and locked the door of my room behind me. In the tiny bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face over and over again, the cuts and grazes stinging, the water running pink with blood from a gash above my eye. The man in the mirror looked like a victim. Cut, bruised, and bloodied, eyes shadowed dark with exhaustion. A long way from home.
I stared at my reflection for a moment.
Then straightened up, took a deep breath that filled my chest.
Chin up. Shoulders back.
Beaten up, maybe. But not beaten. Not yet. I still had a couple of cards left to play.
FRIDAY
70
I slept badly and woke early with a pounding headache, my face sore and my ribs stiff. I’d left the cell phone on overnight in case any important calls came in, and its chirrups and bleeps had kept me in the shallow waters of sleep for most of the night, unable to fall all the way into a deep, uninterrupted slumber. My limbs felt heavy. After a bleary check of the phone for texts or emails—nothing significant in the precious few hours I had been asleep—I stood under a scalding hot shower for ten minutes, head down, eyes closed, feeling the water beating hard against the back of my neck. I tried to remember what I’d been dreaming about. It felt like something important, something relevant, hovering just out of my reach. Some fact or connection that had eluded me for too long. But it was a blur, and the more I willed it to snap into focus, the further it drifted away.
By the time I was dressed, it was still only 7:20, too early for what I had planned, so I sat on the bed and scrolled through my Facebook feed on the cell phone. Three new notifications. A colleague’s birthday and a belated comment in response to the picture of William I had posted last Thursday. A
t least someone hadn’t noticed I was now a pariah.
My last notification was the most interesting.
It was a response on Messenger from Mark Ruddington, one of Mel’s friends on Facebook who’d accepted my friend request a couple of days ago. I had asked him to get in touch with me after seeing the post about their schooldays together. And now he had.
Hey there Joe, nice to *meet* you. Yes can give you a call—what do you want to talk about?
I typed another message:
We’re having a party for our 10th wedding anniversary and I’m gathering stories from her schooldays. I didn’t know her back then so thought you might be able to fill me in.
He replied almost straight away.
No probs. School run now but can call you a bit later this morning?
An hour later, I sat silently in the back of a taxi, watching street after street of terraced houses slide by, working-class neighborhoods clustered near to the docks. The air was cold under a sharp blue sky, people walking to work, standing at bus stops smoking or staring at their phones, teenagers slouching to school. Lines of cars bunching up in the morning rush hour.
My cell phone rang in my hand, Mel cell on the display.
“Joe, are you OK? Where are you?”
It occurred to me that these two questions always went hand in hand when she tried to reach me. And why do you think she always asks the second question?
“I’m all right,” I said quietly.
“I’m worried about you, Joe. When are you coming home? William keeps asking what’s happening and why you weren’t here this morning to take him to school.”
“What did you say to him?”
“That you were visiting a friend.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed. “Yeah. A friend.”
“What did he say?”