Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “Half an hour then,” Henry said and snapped his phone shut.

  “Now don’t forget you’re giving the Bloomsbury room a thrice over at ten,” Christopher said. He paused to pluck a tobacco pouch from his tweed jacket pocket and peer thoughtfully over a half-played game of Kerplunk on an upturned box. “The agent’s the usual teenage barrow-boy – all hair-wax and St George cufflinks – but I’ve had him swear on his Burberry braces this place is what we’re after. Give it your professional opinion. If you think it’s hunky-dory, tell him I’ll sign for the keys this afternoon.”

  “And it better be ready for us by Wednesday,” Julio said pointedly. “We cannot foul up blow off.”

  “Gotcha,” Henry nodded, sliding the tiny memory card from the back of the camera and slipping it into his trousers.

  “Oh and while you’re at our printer,” Christopher said, clicking his gloved finger with a squeaky snap. “Be a poppet and get a discreet quote for a ream of Fitzgeralds. We’re running low. Pete?” he called.

  “One second …”

  “Grab Henry the Maurer & Fitzgerald letters. They’re in the purple bag.”

  “Sure, I’ll – oh for Chrissakes. Neil! This bloody till?”

  We moved back out into the shop where Pete was cursing, poking at the sub-total key, trying to tug his trapped Watchmen T-shirt from the drawer. Henry dumped the revolting sports holdall onto the counter, removed a plastic wallet and slid out a sheet of headed paper.

  “And make sure the printer’s clear,” Christopher called out as he left. “We need our page dropped in, bound and sitting on this counter when Grayson walks in here tomorrow morning, on pain of … well, death isn’t my style. On pain of a great deal of pain. Tell him that. Now off you pop.”

  “You think he’ll definitely be here?” I asked, reaching past Pete and stabbing the sub-total to no avail. “Tomorrow?”

  “I have every confidence he is over the Atlantic as we speak,” Christopher said. “American Airlines Flight 609 from Kansas to Heathrow.”

  “And what happens if the catalogue isn’t ready? Any chance Grayson will buy your auction story without it?”

  “By which I presume, despite constant references to the contrary Neil, you mean our auction story?”

  I attempted a swallow, only to find my Adam’s apple had swollen to the size and consistency of a cue ball.

  “It is unlikely. A convincing blute is key to this sort of game.” Christopher patted himself down like a suspect, eventually drawing his pipe from his trousers. “Otherwise it’s just a bunch of guys yakking. Never forget the persuasive power of print, Neil. Talk is one thing of course, but to give a mark something solid? Proof, that he can hold, smell, touch. There in black and white – or in our case four-colour offset litho. Works wonders. Just ask yourself why Catholics travel thousands of miles to glimpse the Shroud of –”

  Christopher stopped at the jangling commotion of Henry clattering back through the door, breathlessly. Everyone tensed, eyes wide.

  “Just so as you know, there’s someone lookin’ like he’s headed here.” Henry panted. “Late sixties. Brogues, driving gloves. On a mobile phone. Mentioned Neil’s name.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Windsor Davies does he?” I winced.

  “More like that tiger from The Jungle Book …”

  “Aww crap.”

  The place promptly exploded in a frenzy of elbows and cursing. Henry was out of the door and down the street. Christopher shuffled Julio and himself out of sight quickly with a move move! just as the door jingled with the aroma of tight tweed and cigars.

  “Neil? Made that first million yet young man? Jane said I’d find you … oh. Hullo there.”

  Pete, trapped behind the counter – smiley cartoon shirt still gripped in the till’s teeth – took a deep breath and looked up. He gave his wide smile.

  “Good morning sir,” he said.

  “Edward,” I squeezed, mind thudding with panic. “Gosh. Uhmm …”

  The shop went quiet, until Edward’s crashing upper-class duffery forced him forward, hand extended.

  “And who’s this? Weekend staff is it? Hn? Hn? Weekend staff?”

  Fortunately where Edward came from, all black men were good only as manual labour so having my own carrier-bag wallah appealed to his bigoted in-bred idiocy.

  Edward pumped Pete’s hand violently. “Edward Spencer. This layabout’s in-law. Well? Saints preserve us Neil, some common courtesy wouldn’t go amiss.”

  “S-Sorry. Sorry, this is, uhh –”

  “Ted,” Pete said. “Everyone calls me Ted. Friend of Neil’s. I’m giving him a hand with the exhibition.”

  “Ted,” Edward said, eyebrows bouncing. “Good man, good man. Heaven’s Neil, what’s that frightful stench? Law, it’s no wonder you can’t close a sale.”

  “Just some … some plumbing problems,” I said quickly. “Nothing uhm … wh-what brings you … ?”

  “I’m meeting some friends at the club for Sunday lunch. Janey mentioned you’d abandoned them. And what’s this she’s telling me about you giving my accountant the runaround? This is my granddaughter’s future Neil.”

  “I wasn’t giving anyone –”

  “Don’t make me regret this, young man,” Edward juddered crossly, chins wobbling over his collar. “Get him over. Get that money working for you. It’s in your hands now. Janey’s given me your sort code and whatnot –”

  “Whatnot?” I blurted, knees a-buckle.

  “For the transfer. Close of business tomorrow it’ll be all yours. I’m leaving for the coast for a couple of nights and I want to see a draft portfolio of whatever my man thinks is for the best by the time I’m back in London. It’s not just sitting there to look pretty.”

  “Absolutely,” Pete interrupted, causing Edward to turn, his shuddering jowls following behind with a wet clapping sound. “Sorry,” Pete said. “It’s just I have a wise father-in-law myself. Financially shrewd, y’know. Knows a thing or two.”

  “That right?” Edward dissembled. “Shrewwwwd? Good man, good man.” Pete was warming him like a vintage port. Edward began to pace the store slowly, silk hanky over his nose, dragging disapproving eyes about the wares with the odd tut or two. I took the opportunity to throw panicked looks at Pete, but he tossed back some reassuring nods.

  “I mean look at this. Six hundred pounds?” Edward spat, getting dribbles of his upper-class genetic code all over Robert Redford’s glass. “Good God man, no one’s going to wander in off the street and pay that sort of money for something they could get in Tesco.”

  “That’s what I keep saying sir,” Pete piped up. The sir was a beautiful touch. Edward’s chest ballooned out like a bullfrog after a Sunday roast. “We should be focusing more on … well … ” and he let the sentence trail off, reading accurately Edward’s unstoppable desire to finish everyone else’s –

  “Exactly!” Edward said. “It’s all tourists around here. You want to have a few souvenirs in the window. Ceramic bits and doodahhs. They’re moving them by the handful not a hundred yards from here. You’ve had that bloody eyesore up there since you bought this place.”

  “I had an offer on it just last week in fact,” I said. “An offer which will open up a whole new raft of contacts, so –”

  “Then what the bally hell is it still doing up there? Apart from making the place look untidy?”

  “Well I’m considering –”

  “Tcha! And while you are, he’s on the interweb getting it for half price from Tesco dot com. What have I told you Neil? Time and time again.”

  “Close the –”

  “Close. The. Sale,” Edward punctuated firmly. He began to button his overcoat, tugging back his shoulders, shifting his portly frame under the cashmere. “For goodness sake man, this is Book One stuff. Tell him, Ted.”

  “Book One stuff,” Pete said with a barely concealed smirk.

  “Good man. Tell Janey I’ll call her this evening. And you?” he said, fixing me with a podgy in
dex finger. “I won’t be able to concentrate on my trip with the thought of little Lana’s future sitting dead in some easy saver account,” and he curled his lip. “So best we get this sorted before I go I think. Be in my study this afternoon. We’ll say five o’clock.”

  “This afternoon?”

  “Cab and back with your paperwork. Won’t kill you. I’ll have my Chandler Dufford chap there to take a look. Five o’clock. Bring your bookkeeping. No excuses,” and with that, Edward harrumphed out of the door into the street and away.

  After a beat, I exhaled, Christopher and Julio emerging from the office.

  “Flattery,” Pete smiled, pre-empting my strike, “is telling the other person precisely what he thinks of himself. Now how the hell does this – a-ha!” The till drawer slid open petulantly.

  “And all of us,” Christopher said, popping his pipe in his mouth and lighting up. “Be we workers in a factory, clerks in an office or even a king upon his throne. All of us –”

  “– like people who admire us,” I finished. Christopher’s face took a turn lighting up.

  “Our bible. Mr Carnegie. You read it.”

  “Bits and pieces.”

  “Good man, good man. We’ll make a grifter of you yet. Now, where shall we hang these pants?”

  Come four-thirty that afternoon, true to my promise to Edward, I was in a black cab heading west. Sliding left and right on the rear vinyl seat, listening to the light London rain rattle on the window, the Euston Road rolled along outside, grey and dusty, punctuated once in a while by a bright flash as a crocodile of anoraks slithered by, tourists presumably somewhere snug inside.

  Heart thudding and throat fat, I sat forward, tugging the all-important paperwork from my inside pocket. I crackled it open on my lap for the fifth time, reading it over again, stomach anxious and squirty.

  Nothing had changed.

  Of course, nothing had changed.

  With a sigh, I sat back, head lolling on the seat, feeling the engine’s vibration bubble the vinyl. I couldn’t relax. I was too jittery, too twitchy. I flipped the paper over and slid a black, Darth Vadar biro from my denim jacket, clicking the helmet at the top in and out, in and out.

  I began to scribble, mind furrowing, mumbling a mantra.

  “I’ve been trying to call. I’m stuck in traffic …”

  £100,000. Minus £39,000 = £61,000.

  “I’ve been trying to call. I’m stuck in traffic …”

  Minus mortgage payments × 2 …

  “I’ve been trying to call. I’m stuck in traffic …”

  Minus Rod-o-matic, minus skip-hire … minus replacement plumbing, replacement heating …

  I checked the figures again.

  If all went according to plan, in three days’ time I’d have enough left over to refit the shop. Enough to take Jane and Lana away for a week.

  I sat back, rattling Darth Vadar between my teeth anxiously.

  If all went according to plan.

  “I’ve been trying to call. I’m stuck in traffic …”

  Relax. It’ll be okay. Relax.

  Pushing the paper aside, I pulled my paperback from a carrier bag, flipping open the page to where it was folded and tried to focus, to keep my mind distracted. Dale Carnegie was banging on about the Battle of Waterloo.

  Napoleon apparently invented his own names and ranks: Marshals of France; Legions of Honour; Chief High Whatnots of Oohja – and handed them out to thousands of troops to bolster their confidence. He was criticised of course for giving out these ‘toys’ to war-hardened veterans, but had simply replied ‘men are ruled by toys.’

  An uneasy thought struck me and I lowered the book.

  Inventing cosmetic roles just to beef up self-esteem?

  I looked around the cab.

  Sending underlings on pointless errands to make them feel involved, make them feel part of the gang?

  My mobile began to purr. Edward, no doubt. Calling to check I was on my way. Tossing Dale Carnegie aside, I dug around in my jacket, hauled out the phone and thumbed it open.

  “I’ve been trying to call. I’m stuck in … oh, it’s you. Yes, yes fine,” I said, chewing the inside of my cheek anxiously. “Got it all here.”

  I looked nervously over the paperwork beside me on the seat, lifting the top sheet and staring at it.

  “Yes, I know where I’m going,” I said.

  Terminal three arrivals. American Airlines. 609 from Kansas SLN.

  “Are you sure you need me to do this?”

  “Of course dear chap,” Christopher crackled. “Nearly there?”

  I took a look out through the rain-dimpled windows. The cab skooshed beneath a large green road sign.

  Hammersmith. Hounslow. Heathrow.

  “Arriving at London LHR at 5.10pm?” I’d said, flapping the print-out exactly one hour ago. “From Kansas? What am I supposed to do with this?”

  “We think you gotta go meet Grayson,” Henry said, looking up at me.

  “Meet him? When? What are you talking about?”

  “At the airport,” Pete said. He checked his watch. “Ten past five.”

  “Me?”

  A morally flexible printer now busy inserting Jerry’s jockies somewhere in a Sotheby’s catalogue between Batman’s bat-boots and Wonder Woman’s wonder-bra, Henry had returned and we had gone through the game again slowly, walking through the store, acting it out, looking for snags, problems and potential give-aways. We now sat, camped out around the salty remains of our McSundayLunch in the back office. On the radio, Gardeners’ Question Time was drawing to its usual nail-biting conclusion. Christopher was out front with what appeared to be an eight-year-old in a Fisher-Price My Little Estate Agent costume complete with a fat Burberry knot and swing-along Audi key fob.

  “The tale needs more,” Julio said, wiping grease from the tip of his gloves and lighting one of his foul Lambert & Butt-cracks. “A push. Convincer. Must be you.”

  “No,” I said. I said it again. “No way. I’m not getting involved in this. I’ve got to …” and I flapped my hands about the shop. “I’m meeting my father-in-law at five. I don’t get involved. That was the deal.”

  “You just take hundred thousand for sitting on arse,” Julio said. “Make coffee and lending us your four walls, eh?” The dynamic in the room seemed to shift. I was cornered suddenly, looking down three barrels.

  “Look, I’m not … that wasn’t the agreement, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Splendillously excellerful,” Christopher said, appearing in the doorway. “Bloomsbury’s signed and sealed. What news of our convincer?”

  “And as if by magic, the shopkeeper bottled it,” Pete said.

  “Bottled – ? I see,” Christopher said. But he didn’t say it right.

  When people genuinely see, you’ll notice that they say “I see,” with a sort of dah-dum. High-low. I see. Like that. What you have to worry about is the reverse. What Christopher did. The low-high. The dum-dahhh.

  I seeee.

  “It’s a very straightforward play,” Pete said. “You meet him off the plane in a couple of hours, follow him to –”

  “Wait!” I yelled. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “Plans must be flexible, Neil.”

  I looked over the room, my throat tightening.

  “I knew it,” I snarled, more at my own stupid self than at the group. “I fucking knew it. Shit,” and with locked teeth and angry knuckles I slammed out of the office into the shop, where the bell was tinkling and Mr Cheng was pushing through the door.

  “G’afternoo –”

  “Closed!” I yelled, Cheng slipping off the step and backing into the street, handkerchief flapping.

  “Neil, Neil, Neil, sweetheart …”

  “Fuck. Fuck!” I spat, slamming the door, lashing out, flailing, kicking at displays and racks, head thudding. “Forget it. Forget it. It’s off, it’s over. Just – fuck it.”

  I stood, breathing deep, surrounded by fading memorabilia.<
br />
  Why? My head thudded. Why? Why did I ever think it would be simple? That I’d be able to keep my hands clean? Hadn’t my father taught me anything?

  Christopher stood by the desk. He examined the bowl of his pipe for a long minute, finally reaching into his jacket and removing his notebook, penknife, Zippo and fountain pen, stacking them on the desk before finally locating a book of matches. He sparked one with a flare and lit his pipe, filling the room with sweet blue smoke.

  “You’re a good-looking fellow, Neil. You aware of that? Your wife, Jane is it? Jane. Buys you lotions and creams I bet. Moisturisers, antiseptic sticks. I expect it’s why everyone assumes you’re a homosexual.”

  I looked at him. He smiled gently.

  “Of course all the camp kitsch and homo-eroticism won’t be helping,” and he waggled his pipe at the four walls. “Bulging biceps, sculptured abs. Gargantuan groins straining away in tight lyrca. It’s all a little Freudy don’t you think?”

  “For the hundredth time, I’m a happily married –”

  “Shush shush, of course you are, of course you are,” he patted, shaking his head. “I just mean you look after yourself. Your appearance. Jane likes you to look nice. And who can blame her.”

  “Look, I’m not doing it. Whatever this is designed to do, butter me up, whatever –”

  “You use a shaving foam or a cream Neil? Or one of these frightful fluorescent gel whathaveyous?”

  “I have a father-in-law who not only loathes me but trusts me about as far as he could throw a well-paid divorce lawyer’s annual bonus. Which isn’t far. If I don’t go and see him and spin him some story about lost accounting books, my marriage and my life are all over. I’m going to do that, you are going to sort this. We had an agreement.”

  “And so we did, Neil. And so we did,” Christopher puffed calmly, sending his brogues on a tour of the store. “I have an old-fashioned folding razor myself. My father taught me to use it. Can’t abide these new ones. Two blades. Three blades. Four blades. It’s like the old days of the bi-plane. We’ll have razors the size of Venetian blinds soon enough. Progress I believe it’s called.”