“The overwhelming probability is that it will be. That doesn’t change the fact that two men have already been shot to death in this mess, and we don’t have the foggiest notion why. I know we’re just going to Earl’s Court—”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“That’s the place. And you and I both think we know Earl’s Court. But any, repeat any community of humans is like an ants’ nest. Take off the front wall and you never know what kind of activity you’re going to find.”
“Goodness,” Phoebe said. “I thought only an artist like Stephen could get so intense.”
“Still want to come?” Oops, I thought. Bad choice of words.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Very much so. I’ll be a good girl and do whatever you say.”
All of a sudden, the double entendres were flying so thick and fast, I was afraid to say anything for fear of incriminating myself. In my own eyes, if nowhere else.
I just said, “Fine,” and dragged her out of there.
The cab struggled down Earl’s Court Road, home of London’s worst traffic, if you go by my experience of it. I had him drop us off in front of the Underground station, so we could come up to W. G. Peterson and his school slowly.
Earl’s Court is one of London’s more interesting neighborhoods. Unlike, say, Barnes, it actually behaves like a big-city neighborhood, going twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Well, say eighteen hours a day. Even in Earl’s Court, they don’t want to overdo things.
Two kinds of people gravitate by some mystical process to the area—foreign students, of the full-time variety, not the visa-mill type; and Australians. In Earl’s Court, you can purchase a magazine expressly for “Young Ozzies in London.”
Another kind of industry seems to be centered in the Earl’s Court area, though I couldn’t prove it by personal experience. Walk into any phone booth in the area, and you’ll see every available inch of space is covered by business cards sporting line drawings of women in various unorthodox attires, featuring most prominently garter belts or high, spike-heeled boots, carrying messages like “HEADMISTRESS—knows how to deal with naughty boys” followed by a phone number, or “Polly Morphus—discipline, bondage, enemas, you name it,” also followed by a phone number. As we passed by a phone booth, I wondered idly what Phoebe would make of the cards.
I was familiar with Earl’s Court for a totally different reason. Earl’s Court Road was the home of, as far as I could tell, the one and only Taco Bell in the entire British Isles. Roxanne is afraid of what she thinks of as her addictive personality, but somehow, she let Taco Bell tacos crawl under her defenses.
She spotted the place one day, strictly by chance, from the top deck of the number 74 bus, and she almost caused a traffic pileup persuading the driver to make an unscheduled stop so she could get off the bus and get some. Now, every week or so, we have to make a run out here to stock up. She sogs them up in the microwave and eats them. She likes them soggy. I try not to look.
I was just as glad not to be going there today—it gets embarrassing ordering thirty tacos to go. Our destination was a couple of blocks past Taco Bell.
I saw the sign—one flight up, like all these places seemed to be, and about twenty yards ahead.
I stopped to speak to Phoebe. “All right, kid,” I told her, “this is it.”
She looked extremely alarmed. “This is what?” she wanted to know.
“This is your big chance at adventure. This is the private-eye caper you put in your memoirs.”
“You’re teasing me,” she said.
“Little bit,” I admitted. “But I’m not kidding about your being able to help me.”
“You’re not?”
“Cross my heart. It’s not big, or very demanding, but it will help, if you do it.”
“What do I have to do?”
“I’m going to go upstairs and tell a bunch of lies. All you have to do is stand next to me and act as if you believed them. If you managed to look demure and devoted, it would help the overall picture.”
“What do I say?”
“After hello, nothing. I’ll handle it. Remember, Jane Wyman won an Academy Award without saying a word.”
“Don’t you ever take anything seriously?”
“Sure,” I said. “Everything. Except myself. It’s the only path to true happiness.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” she said.
The ground floor of the building held a newsagent’s shop. Remembering the onion on my burger, I stopped in to get a roll of Trebor Soft Mints for my breath. I planned to lie to whomever I found inside; there was no reason to gross them out, too.
The Evening Standard, London’s one and only afternoon newspaper, had come out. I took a quick look through it to see if Bristow had arrested anybody. He hadn’t. The big news was some chicanery with a soccer player’s contract, but that had been going on so long it was practically a soap opera.
“Okay,” I told Phoebe outside, “here we go.”
And in we went.
It wasn’t exactly halls of ivy. The entryway looked like the back stairs of a very old hospital—clean enough, but shabby and gray. The stairs and railings were metal and concrete, painted over thickly in gray enamel. There were gray rubber treads on each step.
The door at the top of the stairs read “W. G. Peterson School of English, Fernando Weiskopf, Director.”
I waited outside and listened. Phoebe started to say something, but I put a finger to my lips and she shushed.
If anybody was learning English inside there, it was happening very quietly. No talking, no lecturing, no sound of numerous people shuffling around in a classroom.
Not that it was completely silent, by any stretch of the imagination. Drawers and doors were being opened and slammed, papers were being crumpled up, curses were being muttered.
It sounded suspiciously as if the place were being tossed by a none-too-competent and very frustrated searcher.
I took Phoebe by the shoulder. “Change of plan,” I whispered. “You wait outside.”
She pouted. “No,” she whispered back.
So much for her promise, I thought. It wasn’t really possible to argue, and pushing her down the stairs, while it would been very satisfying, was probably overkill. Also it would make too much noise.
“Wait halfway down the stairs then,” I whispered. “I’ll call you if everything is all right.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, just like you promised to listen to me, you miserable little twerp.”
She grinned, kissed me on the nose, and retreated down the stairs as if she thought she was cute.
Cute my ass. When I’m about to go through a door with God knows what behind it, I don’t want anybody playing games.
I waved Phoebe down a further couple of stairs, and she went reluctantly.
I tightened my lips and rolled my eyes. If Roxanne had ever had anything to worry about from this creature (which she had not) any vestige of it was gone by now.
I concentrated again on the door, and what might be behind it. I decided to do things the tried-and-true way.
I grabbed the knob, turned it quickly, and flung the door open.
I waited a second. There was no fusillade of gunfire, so I poked my head around.
A man sat at a desk, surrounded by piles of paper and plastic garbage bags full on the floor. He was dressed in a light blue suit, too summery for the weather. He had muddy blond hair, swarthy skin, and blue eyes. He was in his mid-to late-forties, slim, not too tall, and controlling his temper with an effort.
He fixed me with the blue eyes.
“I am sorry,” he said. “We are not open.”
He had a good voice, and spoke perfect English, but his accent was strange, as mixed up as his name was.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I just want to ask a few questions.”
“Journalists,” he said. He said in the exact tone of voice you’d use if you found maggots in yo
ur peanut butter sandwich. “I have had too much of journalists.”
“I’m not a journalist,” I told him. “I’m a potential customer.”
“Do you think I am an idiot? You are an American. You have no need of instruction. You speak English perfectly well. Unmusically perhaps, but perfectly comprehensibly.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m a potential customer, but not a potential student. The student would be Mathilde. She’s a girl from the Dutch East Indies. We were lucky to find her. She’s a great cook, and the children love her. She loves us, too, you see, or at least she says so, and she wants to stay in England. We all thought it would help if she learned English a little better, you know?”
I was going to go on to say that I’d understood that the school here was very understanding when it came to scheduling classes for the student when said student was free of other duties. I was going to add that Mathilde had an awful lot of other duties, and that there might be whole weeks when they didn’t see her, but that of course did not reflect on her desire to learn the language, and that I would pay for the whole time the course took.
That’s what I was going to tell him. The fact that I never got to certainly wasn’t my fault, and after all the trouble I went to to concoct that lovely lie, I decided to put it down for you here, so it shouldn’t go completely to waste.
The man behind the desk seemed to make an effort to get his agitation under control. He took a deep breath, and spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“I’m sorry, sir, but the school is not accepting applicants at this time.”
That was news to me. Bristow and boys had checked the place out, I knew. I wondered if the powers behind the school were running scared.
“Oh,” I said. “That’s a shame, Mr. ... I presume you’re Mr. Weiskopf?”
He bowed his head slightly.
“At your service,” he smiled. Then his face fell. “Or, alas, not, since I have no services to offer at the present moment.”
Unasked, I walked around to the front of his desk and took a seat, moving a stack of papers from the chair to do so. I tried to sneak a look at the papers, but they looked like authentic teachers’ reports. I supposed they had to do some legitimate teaching around there, or at least fake it.
“Not at the present moment,” I said.
“No, sir.”
“If you’ll forgive a personal comment, that’s an interesting combination of names you have there.”
“I am originally from Argentina, a nation of immigrants, no less than your own.”
“True,” I said. “And look at us now, here in London. We’re turning England into a nation of immigrants, too. Of course, you know that; your business is built on it.”
“Yes,” he said sadly. Sad, he looked more Hispanic. “Yes, it was.”
“Listen,” I said. “How about a later moment?”
“I am afraid I don’t understand.”
I was a split second late in answering him; I’d caught something from the corner of my eye, a shape shifting on the other side of the pebbled glass of the doorway, on the landing in the hall.
You couldn’t make out features, but the proportions and the colors were right. Phoebe had sneaked back upstairs to listen in. You’d think she would have had brains enough at least to have crouched down below the window and put her ear to the keyhole.
I couldn’t figure out how Weiskopf couldn’t see her. He had a better line of sight to the door than I did. Possibly, it was the fact that he was suddenly concentrating on my face as though he suspected me of something.
I didn’t have enough spare brain cells to dwell on it at the moment. I was trying to think of something to do to Phoebe. A good spanking seemed appropriate, but Roxanne would misunderstand, and Phoebe, that perverse little twerp, would probably enjoy it.
“What don’t you understand?” I asked Weiskopf. I found myself hoping I looked suspicious enough to keep his eyes focused on me and away from the door. I concentrated on averting my own gaze, so I wouldn’t draw his attention to it.
“A later moment?”
“Oh, that. You said the school wasn’t accepting pupils at this time. I was wondering when the next time would be that you were accepting students.”
“Ah, I see,” he said. “No, Mr. Cobb, it was a bad choice of words on my part. The school is closed indefinitely.” A little of his old tension and anger came back. “The school may well be no more.”
I was horrified.
“But why?” I demanded. “I’ve heard such good things about this place.”
“It is truly sad,” Weiskopf said. “But events beyond my control have made it impossible to continue. I have already made the faculty redundant. You come upon me in the midst of cleaning out the office for the last time.”
“What kind of events?” I asked, thinking the answer ought to be good, like “One of our students got wasted the other night,” or something along those lines.
But it turned out to be even better than that.
He said, “We have been driven from business by the power of lies and false publicity.”
Then he said, “What is the matter?”
This last question let me know my face had slipped. I decided it didn’t matter anyway.
“You like that line, don’t you?” I said.
“Again, Mr. Cobb, I’m afraid I don’t understand?’
“The stuff about lies and false publicity. You used it word for word in the anonymous letter you sent to Lady Arking.”
Weiskopf’s face went completely blank. Right now, he didn’t look German or Hispanic. He just looked dead.
“You are talking nonsense,” he said. “You will go now.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Especially since you’ve called me Cobb twice since I’ve been here.”
“So? That is your name, is it not?”
“Sure it’s my name, but I haven’t mentioned it. What is it? Did you recognize me from the papers or the TV news? I got a decent amount of publicity on Monday.”
Weiskopf didn’t answer, so I answered myself.
“Nah,” I said. “That can’t be it. At least not all of it, because there was no reason for you not to have said something about it. You’re hiding something, Weiskopf.”
“I am hiding nothing, except the depth of my anger at you for disrupting an already sad day with your lies.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And false publicity, I know. Listen, what I think we’re going to do here is call Detective Inspector Bristow, and have him come down here with some of his men and help you clean out the office.”
“I do not have to stand for this!”
“I think you probably do. I’m fifteen years younger, five inches taller, and fifty pounds heavier than you. I don’t think you’re going to get through me. May I use your phone, please?”
So much for my tough-guy act. He picked the damn thing up and threw it at me.
It was a modern phone—light plastic and microchips. Considering the force with which it hit me in the face, if it had been one of the old-fashioned Bakelite-and-metal jobs, it would have killed me.
As it was, it tied me up just long enough for him to make a break for the door.
As I pulled phone cord from around my neck, I yelled “Phoebe! Get the hell out of there!”
Quick, clicking footsteps on the stairs showed me that for once, to my astonishment, she had actually listened.
I got loose and took off after the Argentine Flash. He was about halfway down the stairs when I got through the door. He was too far away for me to launch myself in a flying tackle that way PC Staines got me, but I swear I got down the stairs without my feet having touched the rubber treaders more than twice.
I left my fingerprints on the fabric of his jacket, but I slipped on the welcome mat and lost my grip. He disappeared out the door.
Goddammit, I thought, even as I was scrambling to my feet, how embarrassing this was going to be when I had to tell Bristow about it.
I was tempted to just lie there and let him go, except I had visions of Phabulous Phoebe trying to stop him on her own, or worse, of Weiskopf grabbing her and holding her hostage to make good his escape.
In retrospect, I realize what a goop I was. I had no legal standing whatsoever. All Weiskopf had done was to flee from a maniac who had announced his intention to hold him captive in his own office.
I didn’t have a single witness who could back up the fact that the Argentinian liked to quote from unpublished anonymous letters, or that he’d called me by my name without ever having heard it.
Or maybe I did. Who knows what Phoebe managed to gather, hanging around outside the door. Maybe she did put her ear to the keyhole for a while.
I, however, was not thinking of any of that at the time. I just wanted to get out the door, and see if I could at least determine the direction he went in.
That’s when he got me again. The next time I pick somebody to bully, I’ll be more careful about it.
Because the clever son of a bitch hadn’t run away at all. He was waiting just past that inner door, in the vestibule, and he kicked me a good one in the nuts as I came through the door.
I said something like “Oooooooooooooooooo,” and fell to my knees on the tile floor. Weiskopf kicked me again, in the stomach this time. They must play lots of soccer in Argentina. I think the only reason he didn’t kill me was insufficient space to wind up.
He said, “Auf Wiedersehen, Mr. Cobb,” and walked off, laughing softly.
I’d like to think he was still laughing when he stumbled off the curb and got run over by the taxi.
14
“We must apologize to our deaf viewers for the loss of subtitles.”
Angela Rippon
Evening News, BBC
IT ALL HAPPENED IN the few seconds it took me to stagger to my feet and come out of the building nursing my Grievous Bodily Harm. The squeal of breaks and the screams of passersby hadn’t died away yet.
A crowd had gathered already, but I was tall enough to see over the top of it, and one look was enough.
Weiskopf was dead. No one gets a London taxi parked on his head and lives.
It would have made me queasy if I weren’t already queasy from being kicked in the balls and the gut. My sentiments toward Weiskopf, had I been pressed to put them into words at that moment, would have been, “Serves the bastard right.” Uncharitable of me, perhaps, but anybody who’s gotten a kick like that will understand. Everybody else will just have to take my word for it.
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