I wasn’t sure what my line was here. I was toying with ‘uhmm’, or possible ‘goodbye’ when Scott kicked me, helpfully, under the table.
“Ow! Uhmm, maybe. Okay, yes,” I said. “Look, what is – ?”
“You better do the deal though mate,” Scott interrupted, handing the watch over. He was right. It was made by the nice people at Rolex and had the easy weight of a housebrick. “No bloke’s gonna truss’ me are they. Fink I ’arf inched it or summink. Nahh, you’re the gent. Best you try an’ flog it. See if you can get two ’undred. Then we’ll split it.”
The table went quiet. I glanced about for a prompt.
“Well go on then, man,” Scott said brightly, dropping out of character for a second. “Off you pop. You’re the salesman. See if you can shift it. Try our dessert waiter. He could do with a bit of reliable timekeeping.”
So up I got. Was it his charm? His smile? The fact I’d got outside the better part of a bottle of wine and the envelope was now on my side of the table? I don’t know.
But up I got.
I was halfway around the room, wandering woozily among the tables when our waiter naturally approached. Did I need something? I figured, in for a penny, and I offered him the watch. Well, you’ve got to have a go, haven’t you? But bang, just like that, he asked me how much.
So I said make me an offer and he looked at it, umming and ahhing. And he said three-fifty.
Three-fifty? I said back, just out of surprise, to which he said ‘all right, four.’
So eager to bring a halt to this bizarre charade and get back to my table where I could work quietly on my headache, I agreed. He said he hadn’t got the cash on him, he’d have to get an advance from the head waiter, but he’d bring it over to the table with the bill.
Job done, I returned to the table, thinking hell, maybe this has proved … whatever the hell it was meant to prove.
“Aah ja’ get on then mate?” Scott asked with a theatrical burp.
“Done. I’m guessing this is what, some sort of –”
“Got me’ share ’ave ya? I need that ’undred.”
“Not yet. A few minutes. The guy’s bringing it over with the bill.”
“I ain’t got toime to ’ang about ’ere wiv you. Where’s me ’undred. C’mon, I ain’t gettin’ shafted. ’Arf the money’s mine by rights an’ you know it. C’mon, ’undred nicker. C’mon.”
Our waiter appeared at the table shifting nervously within his waistcoat, eyes darting.
“Boss has cleared it,” he hissed. “I’ll be back with it in five minutes,” and he scuttled away to the kitchen.
“’Undred. Now,” Scott said. “Or I’m takin’ this for m’self,” and he picked up the watch from the table.
“Okay okay,” I said, sliding my wallet out and flipping woozily through most of the shop’s remaining petty cash. “Here,” I said, counting out five twenties.
“Cheers guv, gawd bless ya,” Scott said, slipping the twenties away in his top pocket and pulling off his hat. He sat up with a small smile.
“Now what?” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“Now what happens?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it?” I frowned. I craned around and saw the waiter in conversation with an older major domo looking chap in stripey trousers. He was handing him a white envelope. “You give me a watch and I sell it? I don’t understand. Is this meant to represent something? The shop? My selling skills?”
Scott just smiled.
The waiter appeared at our table as expected, but then as very much not expected, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yanked off his tie and tossed it to the table, pulling up a spare chair and glugging out the last inch of wine into a new glass. I looked him over. He was tanned in a gap-year sort of way, about my age, but weathered by sunshine and outdoorsyness. His blond hair was patchy and bleached and he had a healthy Colgate smile.
“Neil?” Scott said. “I’d like you to meet Henry David.”
“Pleasure mate,” Henry said in a brand spanking new Australian accent. “You wanna top up?”
I looked at him. I looked at Scott.
“Goes back to the forties,” Scott said. “As most confidence tricks do. The tat, the poke, the gold watch. These were a grifter’s bread and butter.”
“Confidence – ? But, wait,” and I looked to and fro at Scott and Henry again, click clack back and forth for a day or so. As I did, Henry opened his white envelope and slid out a small sheet of grey paper.
“My P45,” he said.
“And the watch?”
“For insurance purposes,” Scott pursed like an antiques dealer, “our experts would recommend a value in the region of about four of your Earth pounds. Keep it though. A souvenir.” “And my hundred quid?” I said.
Scott smiled.
He gave me my money back eventually. Said the first lesson is always free my boy, the first lesson is always free.
Scott continued, laying out the finer details of the short con while I righty-ho-ed as convincingly as I could. But truth was, this was all getting about as wrongty-ho as things got. What had happened to coffee, envelope and go? What was I still doing here?
“No,” I interrupted after a deep breath, sliding my coffee away. “Sorry, but whatever it is, the answer’s no. You’re going to play this gold-watch trick, right? On some helpless guy? Using whatever’s in here,” and I picked up the middle one of the three woozy envelopes beside me, “to con him out of his money?”
The two men looked at me.
“But you can’t do it without me, right? That’s what this lunch is all about?”
“Regrettably the man we are targeting is not interested in fake gold watches. Nor diamonds, art, antiques or dead-cert greyhounds. He’s a buff. Buffer than that envelope you’re holding in your hand in fact. Memorabilia. And a real expert. Not the sort to be taken in just by Henry and I slipping Spider-Man into the conversation and wearing Albert Hitchcock T-shirts.”
“Alfred.”
“Well exactly. The grift is all about trust, Neil. If we’re going to skin this fellow – and frankly we’d be raspberry fools not to – we have to first convince him we’re his kind of people. Your kind of people. Dealers. Experts.”
“Nerds,” Henry added helpfully.
“Right,” I said. “And that’s okay because … ?”
Scott and Henry exchanged bemused looks.
“I mean, it’s all right for you to skin this man out of his money because what? He’s stupid?”
“And greedy,” Henry said.
“Terribly.”
“No,” I said again.
“No?”
“No. No, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. My father? Now he’s someone you should talk to.”
“Father!” Scott cried, hands leaping. “That reminds me. Thank you old chap,” and he began to flap about in the bag next to him. Henry and I watched for a moment.
“But I’m not like him,” I said slowly. “I’m not like my father. If that’s where you’ve got this idea from? I’m …”
“Honest?” Henry suggested. Scott emerged with a jiffy bag.
“Yes. Honest. If you like.”
“Hmn. Quite a liar for an honest man, aren’t we Neil?” Scott said. He upended the jiffy bag and slid out a glittery greetings card, adorned with kittens and bows. He signed his card quickly with a flurry of kisses, peeling out a fat wad of five-pound notes from his wallet. He tucked them in the card and tried unsuccessfully to close it. “Sorry. For my parents. Wedding anni … oh this isn’t going to shut, it’s too … Have you got change, Neil?” and he held out the wad of fives.
“Wait, what do you mean, liar?”
“Hmn? Oh, all that stuff a moment ago? When you agreed that the intelligent and hardworking deserve a step up? And that the lazy and stupid should take a step down. You said that was what you wanted.”
“But I didn’t mean –”
“Excuse me?” Scott clicked his fingers,
the head waiter wafting over. “My dear chap, would you be a bless dumpling and shove the bill on that?” and he handed him a credit card. The waiter glided off. Scott turned back to me. “It was the rationalisation you comforted yourself with, Neil, when you happily offered a mere tenner for Mr Rudy’s photograph.”
“Look,” I said, trying to focus. “Look that was –”
“And if you’re an honest man, Mr Martin, wouldn’t you have offered my Rudy two hundred pounds for the watch just now? We both found the watch on the floor. You agreed to split it fifty-fifty with the tramp …”
“… But I offered you four hundred,” Henry said.
“Didn’t see your honesty leap forth into the – ah, marvellous,” Scott beamed, the waiter gliding back. He signed the credit card slip briskly.
“I’m off to the dunny,” Henry drawled, sliding his chair out with a scrape. “Back in a bit,” and he mooched off.
“I wonder if you’d mind,” Scott was saying to the head waiter. “I have to send two hundred pounds to my parents but the bank could only give me these fives. Could you see if you have some twenties you could change for me? I can’t get the card closed,” and he waved the kittens at him. “Oh and my jacket?”
The waiter backed away with a bow.
“Look, dear fellow. All of this is spectacular in its beside-the-point-ness,” Scott said, “because we’re not involving you in anything dishonest. Henry and I will be the ones playing the game. We’re just cutting you in on your share of the score.”
“A high six-figure sum,” I said, my eyes flicking involuntarily to the envelope on the table once more. My life seemed to be governed by envelopes these days. Thin ones from banks, fat ones from solicitors.
This one in front of me.
“Absolutely. Twenty per cent, as we agreed. Now where’s that Henry got to? I could do with the loo myself,” Scott said, glancing about the room.
“Sir,” the waiter said, presenting a small plate. Ten purple notes lay there in two neat fans.
“Ah, my good man, god bless you,” and Scott handed the waiter his pile of fives, scooping up the twenties. The waiter began to count the notes out into the dish as I watched Scott slip the twenties into his card.
“That’s better, excellent, excellent,” he said. He closed the card and slipped it into the envelope, sliding the whole lot into the stamped jiffy bag and sealing it tight. With a lick of his pencil he started to write his parent’s address on the front.
“One eight five, one ninety,” the waiter finished up. “One ninety five … No no, sir, you are short by five pounds.”
“Hn?” Scott said, the envelope licked and sealed. “Oh that blasted bank, I didn’t even check it. Sorry, may I?” and he took the notes, counting them out himself. “… one ninety, one ninety five … You’re right. Damn and I’ve sealed – Neil, be a bless poppet. You don’t have five pounds you can give this – no. No, wait. Henry owes me five. Let me get it from him.”
Scott stood up.
“You’d better have your twenties back, dear chap,” he said, handing the sealed, stamped jiffy-bag to the waiter. “I’ll see where Henry’s got to. Two ticks,” and Scott wandered off towards the bathroom, humming a tune.
It’s called the Flue.
The thing, the trick. It’s called the Flue. They explained later. After I’d sat there with this stern head waiter for ten minutes of course. Fidgeting, rearranging the coffee cups. Waiting for Scott and Henry to come back. Which, of course they didn’t.
Another waiter came and flanked the table, a clean and manicured hand on my shoulder. The head waiter cracked open the jiffy bag and opened the card.
I don’t know how Scott did it. Secreted them, palmed them, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, he’d walked off with his fives and the waiter’s twenties leaving me to put things right, so that was the last I saw of my petty cash. The waiter let me keep the greetings card though. It was addressed to me after all.
Dear Neil, he’d put, like I say, only the first lesson is free. I’ll be in touch – Christopher.
Christopher Laurie. AKA Rudy, AKA Whittington, AKA J Peckard Scott, AKA Lord knows who.
And when I say ‘they explained what the trick was called later,’ you understand me right.
Later. When I saw them again.
Which I’d absolutely no intention of doing, you understand?
God, growing up in my family had taught me that if nothing else. I was well out of it.
It was just that …
See, when my headache and I got back to the shop, Laura was waiting for me.
She said I’d had a visitor.
five
“Some hairy fellah. Making a real scene. Rattling your shutters, kicking the door. He was pretty pissed off. Wanted to know where you were. Where were you? You’ve been closed for hours.”
“Sorry. Were you … ? I mean was there something I … ?”
“Just wanted to say hi,” Laura said. “Brought you a bun.”
She looked at me, not blinking. In a way women don’t tend to look at me. Ever. I felt the usual spidery heat creep up around my ears. I apologised with a shruggy cough, hauling up the cold clattering shutters. Saying hi? This woman needed a hobby. Or her coffee shop needed a marketing drive.
“And this hairy fellah,” I probed. “Forty-ish? Beard? Red Dwarf T-shirt under a pyjama top?”
“Star Trek. Or Star Wars. One of those.”
“Figures,” I sighed.
We moved into the chilly shop. Two dozen notes pushed under the door from eager collectors offering me top dollar for my entire stock, plus a bunch of flowers from the offices of Boatman Beevers and Boatman apologising for their miscalculation were all notable by their absence.
“That smell’s not getting any better,” Laura said. “Still underwater down there?”
“For the time being,” I said. She was right. The fleshy stench of death and rot was seeping into every page, every poster, every print, even up here on dry land. It wouldn’t be long until my life’s work was all just skip filler.
Moving out the back, I snapped on the blinking lights, the filthy kettle and my Disney tape, The Jungle Book’s ‘Trussst In Meee’ slithering about the shelving, spreading unease. I promptly snapped it off again, my unease levels being dangerously high as it was.
“So who’s the hairy fellah?”
“The fellah is Maurice. Freelance dealer,” I said, booting up the laptop in the office with a clickety-click. “Also a Connect Four grandmaster and the one man I don’t want to see. It clearly isn’t enough for him that his solicitors are lurking in my letterbox every morning.”
“Solici – ? He’s the guy? Shit.” Laura had perched herself against a packing crate full of poster tubes and was gesturing at me with a Lucky Strike. “And you’ve been out avoiding him?”
“Not quite. Remember Wednesday? That chap in the hat with the photographs?”
“Your lunch date?”
“He wants my help,” I said, rattling in my password and leaving my web-page to drag itself into life, “and he’s willing to pay well for it.” The kettle clicked off loudly so, leaving the computer whirring, I clambered over tubes and cardboard in the kitchen to throw coffee granules all over the lino. “Did Maurice say he’d be coming back?”
“Not to me. Wants help doing what?”
“Oh you don’t want to know. One of these?” and I waggled the Nescafé.
“Quick one,” she nodded, so I found another mug, wiped living things from it and splashed some hot water about. I heard her edge into the small kitchen behind me.
“Really. I want to know,” she said.
“Nnnyyeaahhaayyy!” I said, which isn’t much of a segue, I’ll grant you. But Laura had chosen this moment to slide her hands onto my shoulders.
Not place, you understand. Slide. This with the addition of fifteen extra aitches in every word. Whhhhant to knhhhoww, like she was blowing out birthday candles in my ears.
Anyway, me bein
g me, the spoon went one way, the milk went another, my body spasming like an epileptic marionette on the end of a cattle prod, barking my leg on the cupboard with a yelp. Elbows clucking, I spun around, pinned twitchily against the now-granulated counter top, chins doubling. Laura stepped away a little, palms and eyebrows raised.
“S-sorry,” I said, blushing, waving a spoon feebly, “and ow.” My knee began to throb.
“Not a lot of room in here, is there,” she said. “That mine?” and she reached for a coffee mug, waving off the awkwardness like it was a drowsy wasp. I stood blinking, slack-jawed. Should I say anything? What was that? An advance? Or was she ridding me of dandruff like she was my mother?
With an awkward half-smile and a feeble “eh-heh”, noise, I blushed and bumbled out of the kitchen, returning to my laptop, punching in my password and trying to think about other things.
Had I ever been comfortable around women? Truly comfortable? Their casual tactility, their teasing squeezing? It had certainly taken a while with Jane. Two and half long university years in fact, trying to work out what was flirting and what was friendliness. Through candle-lit comedy quarrels over Tolkien and Time Bandits. Over Thunderbirds, Thunder-Cats and Blue Thunder. And even by the end – after I’d proposed, after Jane had accepted – one freezing Christmas-Ball night, flushed with wine, wriggling in a too-tight tuxedo, only then was I certain Jane’s hand jammed down my rented trousers in the front seat of her Fiat Uno wasn’t just having a harmless laugh.
Laura slunk from the kitchen so I attempted to move it all along.
“Do you-uu,” my voice squeaked. “Ahem, sorry. Do you think it was dishonest?” I said. “Only giving him a tenner for the signed Siegel & Shuster pic?”
“The frhhhuitcake?” Laura said breathily. “If he wanted to be treated fhhhhairly, he should have been more pohhhhlite. Is that what he said then? That you were dishhhonest?”
“He said a lot of things.”
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