He left. I got rid of my laceless shoes and lay down on the bed. I went to sleep with the other inmates murmuring about how much time the DI had spent with the American Gangster.
9
“Extraordinary crimes against the People, or the State, must be handled by agents extraordinary.”
Opening blurb
The Avengers, ITV
SO THE TEST CAME back negative, and they let me out of jail about eleven-thirty Monday morning, just too late to make the earliest editions of the Evening Standard, London’s last remaining P.M. paper.
Roxanne, I must say, did it up. I was met at the door of the nick by a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, and Roxanne dressed past the nines, all the way to the elevens, in a backless, strapless silver lamé evening gown. There was a lot of lovely flesh showing, but a not a goose bump visible, although it was a chilly morning, as most London November mornings are.
She clicked up the stairs toward me on silver high heels, with a magnum of Moët & Chandon in one hand and a crystal glass in the other. She got to me, smiled, kissed me, poured champagne, took one red-lipped sip, then held the glass for me. It was cool and good.
All of this was devoured eagerly by news photographers. Despite the overcast sky, we could have gotten a tan from flashbulb lights. I was beginning to understand why celebrities wore dark glasses.
I had my shoelaces and belt back, so I was feeling pretty terrific. A photographer yelled, “Kiss her again,” so I did, at length. It should only have made him as happy as it made me.
“Hello there,” I told her when we came up for air.
“Hello,” she said. “I figured if they were going to make a media circus out of this, I’d give them a real center ring attraction.”
“Papers bad?”
“Horrible,” she said. “I’ve got them in the car.”
“I can hardly wait.”
As we made our way to the car, I just hoped Bristow was getting a good look at this out a window somewhere.
The hacks weren’t going to be content with just pictures. Questions came at us rapid-fire.
“How was your night in jail?”
“I give it one sixty-fourth of a star.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Get on with my life.”
“Is it true you’ve been completely cleared?”
“Ask DI Bristow. That’s what he told me.”
We fought our way through the hacks toward the car. The driver had come around to open the door for us. He was fending off the vultures with one arm.
I could have told him it wasn’t strictly necessary. Possibly in reaction to the tension and devious game-playing of the night before, I found the more or less honest vulgarity of this whole process to be kind of refreshing.
“How do you feel about England?”
“Love it,” I said.
“What about the police?”
“What about them? Human beings doing their jobs. It was an honest mistake,” I lied.
“No hard feelings?”
“I just hope they catch the real guy.” We’d reached the car at last. “Now if you’ll excuse us ... ?”
But they never do excuse you. More questions came flying out of the crowd. We could pick one out above the din, a skeptical, “Not bitter at all, then?”
Roxanne answered that one.
“Not a bit,” she said. “He’s sweet clear through.”
We were laughing hysterically as we collapsed into the car.
“Home, James,” I said.
“Very good, sir,” he replied.
“Your name is really James?”
“No, sir, actually it’s Nigel, but Americans like to call me James for some reason.”
I laughed and turned to the papers. They were bad, just about what I’d expected, except there was more “shock” and “horror” thrown around than I had expected.
Lady Arking’s Orbit, having had a head start in its partnership with the Network, had an exclusive on the “Strange Background of the Mystery American,” which made me look like a combination of Sam Spade and Captain America. It had details on all the cases I’d ever been involved in, and, whether I had anything to do with working them out or not, managed to give me credit for them, including the case I’d screwed up so badly it drove me out of America in the first place.
It occurred to me that Bristow didn’t even have to spring for the phone call to get a glowing recommendation of me—all he had to do was wait for the morning papers.
He had made the call, of course. He brought me a message from Lieutenant Martin: “What the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?” I’d let him know as soon as I had it figured out myself.
Another thing that occurred to me was that as big a pain in the ass as it was for me, Bristow’s strategy had been a brilliant success. None of the papers played up the race angle; they were too dazzled by the idea of an American gunslinger slinging said gun on the streets of London.
Tomorrow, unless DI GETS HANGNAIL SHOCK HORROR turned up, they’d be full of what an eccentric but fun guy I was, trading badinage with the press, with my rich and gorgeous fiancée at my side.
As the car got closer and closer to the South Bank of the Thames, I became less and less aware of the inanities of the papers, and more and more aware of just how gorgeous my fiancée was.
By the time James/Nigel had dropped us off at home, I was hornier than a triceratops.
Just inside the door, we stopped and kissed, an even better one than we’d done for the photographers.
Her dark eyes glittered. “Upstairs,” she suggested.
“You little mind reader, you,” I said, and picked her up and carried her. I dropped her on the bed, and she giggled as she bounced.
I joined her, and held her tight, kissing her neck and shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Then I found the zipper, and the gown came away like the shell of a hard-boiled egg. Progress after that was rapid.
After a long time, we lay beside each other.
“Wow,” I said.
She twisted a finger in my hair. “Yeah, wow.”
A little while later, she started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’d better stay out of trouble, Cobb, for both our sakes.”
I told her that believe it or not, I always tried to stay out of trouble.
“Yeah, well do a better job of it. Cobb, you were only in jail for one lousy night, and look at us. What would we have done if you were getting out of jail after a week? Or a year?”
“Mmmm,” I said. “Spontaneous combustion, at least.”
Just then, the phone gave a short, quick double ring. That was good timing on its part. Ten minutes ago, I would have torn it out of the wall.
Roxanne picked up and answered. She said yes a couple of times, then, “Just a minute.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to me. “Lady Arking’s personal private secretary,” she said.
“Sounds redundant to me.”
“As opposed to her private business secretary,” Rox explained.
“Oh.” Rox never seemed to have anything to do with this kind of stuff, but she always knew all about it. Something genetic. I wondered, if we ever had kids together, if they could do this social stuff, too.
“Lady Arking would be pleased to have us for tea this afternoon. Sixish. She apologizes for the short notice, and hopes we’ll understand.
“This is good,” I pronounced. “Tell her we’ll be there.”
Rox did and hung up the phone.
“So we’ve got an engagement. I guess we ought to leave here about quarter after five. It’ll be rush-hour traffic, but we don’t want to be too early.”
“No,” I agreed. “I wouldn’t mind if her ladyship had to sweat a little bit.”
“But that leaves us hours to kill in the meantime,” she said.
“I know.”
“How are we going to pass the time?”
“Easy,” I said. “We
stock up.”
“Stock up?”
“Yeah. In case I have to go back to prison some day.”
I reached for her.
By six, it was already dark (actually, at this time of year in London, by four-thirty it’s already dark), and after the cab let us off in front of Lady Arking’s place in Regent’s Park, backed on the canal and close to the zoo, we stood in the light of a streetlamp while Roxanne made sure my tie was straight and I had both cuff links.
Since we’d gotten to Britain, Roxanne had been using me as a paper doll, buying me sweaters (they said jumpers) of Scottish wool and weird casual pants with pleats and only one back pocket, and all sorts of things she thought would look good on me.
It was nice to have an excuse to get back into the sort of outfit I knew I looked good in—conservative three-piece suit, navy blue wool with a discreet white pinstripe, white shirt, dark red tie with tasteful blue and gold stripes aimed down across my chest to my left hand.
I used to wear some modification of this outfit every day to work. I used to think of it as my Clark Kent outfit; Roxanne said I looked like a banker.
“You say that as if it were a bad thing,” I told her.
“I’ve known bankers,” she said ominously.
She herself looked terrific, as usual. In this case, she was wearing a dark blue shirtwaist with her dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail held by a silver thing, plus silver hoops for earrings.
It was a pleasure to look at her, and while I was, I became aware of something. She didn’t look so much like a little girl to me anymore. She didn’t look old or anything, just more mature, more womanly. Maybe she was maturing before my very eyes. Maybe, after all these years, I was finally seeing her the way she really was. Maybe it was a defensive illusion on my part—when you are having sex with someone on a regular basis, only a sicko wants to think of that person as in any way a child. After all, she was twenty-seven by now, I was a little surprised to realize.
Whatever it was, it made me happy.
“Presentable?” I said.
“You look great,” she said. “For a banker.”
We walked up the eight steps to the door. I stood there for a moment, looking around.
“What’s the matter?” Roxanne demanded.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just making sure there’s no doorbell before I go crashing any doorknockers around.”
There was no bell, so crash I did, with a clatter of metal into metal-over-wood that resounded through the park and brought jungle screams from the zoo.
It was interesting to learn that the sound of the knocker was just as obnoxious on the outside as it was on the inside. I decided to wait fifteen seconds, then let her rip again—I owed Lady Arking at least one more jolt.
I didn’t get the chance; the door was opened in just eleven seconds. However, my disappointment at that was overwhelmed in my delight at seeing something I had never before seen in my life.
It was a butler, a real live butler. In livery.
And liver spots, too, on his veiny hands and on his bald pate. He must have been about a hundred and two years old, but then where do you find butlers in this day and age?
We told him our business, and, after looking disappointed that we didn’t have any coats for him to hang up, he told us in a surprisingly strong voice that he would inform Lady Arking of our arrival.
I looked around the room he asked us to wait in, saw the portraits on the walls, the chandeliers, the flocked wallpaper, the whole number, and I started to laugh.
“Share the joke?” Roxanne invited.
“We found it!” I said. “Millions of Americans come here every year looking for it. They tour the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, but they never catch up with it.”
“Catch up with what?”
“Christieland! Most Americans come to England expecting to find high tea, whatever that is, and village fetes, and vicarages and rose-covered cottages and stuff like that.”
“We’ve seen all of that since we’ve been here,” Rox protested. “We’ve even met the vicar. He kept hinting about how happy he’d be to marry us.”
“Yeah,” I remembered. “Considering the unwed-motherhood rate in this country, I suppose he was looking to foreigners to save his job.” He had even kept it up when he found out that I’m RC and Rox is Jewish, saying, “Nobody’s perfect.”
“Sure,” I went on, “we’ve seen all that stuff, but it was either pasted on specifically for tourists, or it was, I don’t know, fossilized. The main thing I remember from the Barnes fete was the rap music. That and the Indian food. I didn’t get the Christieland feeling from that.”
“But you do from here?”
“Yeah, I do. We stepped through that door into a kind of perennial 1937, it feels like. I don’t know how Lady Arking leaves it every day to enter the real world, then comes back here at night. It must be worse than jet lag.”
“I never knew you had this nostalgia Jones.”
“I don’t. That’s the irony of it. I like modern London just swell. I was just thinking of all the people who came here and go home disappointed that they haven’t seen the famous London fog.”
Roxanne grinned. “I’ve been kind of disappointed in that myself.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “A little. But this house is the architectural equivalent of an old-fashioned London fog. Can’t you feel it?”
“Maybe,” she said. “And maybe Bambridge is going to come and get us and lead us into a room with chrome-and-glass tables, with a large-screen projection TV showing American football.”
“That’s not on until later tonight. I hope we’re home in time to see it. But I know what you mean.”
“All we can do is wait and see.”
We didn’t have to wait long. The butler came back and said, “Tea is being served in the drawing room.”
He led us down the hallway, past several hundred square yards of carved dark oak, into a room that looked like a set for one of the costume dramas on BBC1.
Lady Arking was in green today, a green as bright as the red she’d been wearing when I first met her. Apparently, she saved muted colors for incognito. She rose when we entered, and shook hands like a man.
The man in the room with her was a little slower on the uptake, but he also rose and shook. He was about half a head shorter than Lady Arking; he was built a little slight. He fit in quite well with the Christieland conceit, with sandy hair made two shades darker by whatever he used to slick it back, and the superior grin on his face. He left eye occasionally twitched, as though it were pining for a monocle.
“Hello, Cobb,” he said. “Pleasure to meet you. Saw your exit from custody of the bobbies on telly. Brilliant, absolutely. Almost art. Worthy of a poem.”
This was Stephen Arking, Lady Arking’s stepson. His mother, Sir Richard’s first wife, had died when Stephen was away at school.
Stephen was a poet. Or, as I was to hear for the first time in just a few seconds, he was “the” poet, though if he was ever published in anything he didn’t have cash behind, I sure never heard of it.
He was dressed like somebody’s idea of a poet, I suppose. Slacks, blazer, and the kind of tie Americans call an ascot. I expected a fish-grip handshake from him, but it was surprisingly firm and dry.
“It was all organized by Miss Schick,” I said. “She’s the brilliant one.”
“Ah,” Stephen said. “All the more pleasure, then, in doing this.” He took Roxanne’s hand and kissed it. “You and I have something in common, my dear. We must get together some day and talk about it.”
“What’s that?” Rox asked.
“We have both spurned communications empires that were ours by birthright. Thank God I’ve had Pamela to run things. Lord knows I can’t be bothered. How do you manage?”
Roxanne smiled sweetly. I knew that smile. Stephen was not making a really good first impression.
“I just mind my own business and cash the dividend checks,
” she said.
Stephen laughed. “Excellent,” he said. “Absolutely excellent. Aren’t they the most refreshing people we’ve met in ages, dear?”
That rang wrong. I didn’t think even a blatant phony like Stephen Arking would look at his stepmother and think of calling her “dear.”
Then I heard a quiet little voice say, “I think they’re absolutely charming, darling.”
I turned, looking for the owner of the voice. I found her after a few seconds, sitting on a chair in the corner. I literally had not noticed her until she spoke.
She was a tiny woman, maybe five feet tall and ninety pounds with her pockets full of change. She was dressed in a pink sweater and a long gray skirt. Once you noticed her, it was possible to see that she was quite pretty, in a china-doll sort of way, with a cap of strawberry-blond curls. Nice face, highlighted by bright blue eyes behind wire-frame spectacles.
This, I found out, was Phoebe Arking, Stephen’s wife. I went over to her. She extended a hand as soft and fragile seeming as a six-year-old’s. I kissed it. She actually blushed.
“Hey,” I said, “fair is fair,” and she smiled me a little bit of a smile.
Over sandwiches and cakes and tea, I learned a little bit about her. She wasn’t much for talk, but she’d talk about Stephen. She had been working as a secretary in a literary agency and somehow came across some of Stephen’s work and took the incredibly bold step of contacting him. Since then, apparently, her life had been bliss, married to Stephen Arking “the” poet.
It occurred to me that they might be happy together at that. He certainly looked as if he would enjoy having someone around to worship him.
I took a bite of a watercress sandwich, with the crust carefully trimmed off. My position on those things is this: British dairy products are so good, especially butter, that you can’t ruin them even if you stick them between two wimpy pieces of bread with a piece of lawn clipping.
The maid (of course, there was a maid—who’s gonna have a butler without any maids?) offered the tray of sandwiches to Phoebe, who studied it carefully, little pink lips pursed in thought. Finally, when I thought the maid was about to brain her with the silver tray, thereby tendering her resignation from Christieland on the spot, Phoebe came through and picked a cucumber sandwich.
Killed in the Fog Page 7