Our Jack. Frankie’s skin prickled. But now wasn’t the time to go picking issue with that.
‘Your timing’s not bad either,’ Riley went on. ‘In fact, I’ve just come into something that might tick the box perfectly. Quite literally, in fact.’ He grinned, nudging Tam and the fat lump standing next to him. ‘Here, you two, stop drooling over that bird’s tits, and pay attention.’
The two of them quickly turned round.
‘I was just telling Frankie here that we’ve just come into a business that might tick exactly the right box, regarding where his little brother might work. Box. Geddit?’ He held up his fists and did a little shuffle with his feet.
‘Er, no, Unc,’ said the fat lad, who had a lazy left eye, and jeans and a fawn leather jacket two sizes too tight.
Tommy rolled his eyes at Frankie. ‘My nephew, Darren,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Got dropped on his head when he was five.’
‘Oh, yeah, right, boss. I get it,’ said Tam, grinning. ‘You mean Rope-a-Dope.’
‘Exactly.’
‘The boxing club?’ said Frankie. ‘Up Hanway Street?’
Riley nodded. ‘The very same.’
‘First place I ever donned a pair of gloves,’ Frankie said. ‘Dad took me and Jack down after I got done over as a kid. Said we needed to toughen up. Back when Sponge Eddy was running it.’
‘Yeah, running it into the fucking ground, more like,’ said Riley. ‘The same as his dumb kid Eddy Junior’s been doing ever since he took over. Instead of making a proper go of things like you’ve been doing here.’ He nodded at the crowd. ‘More like making a proper stop of it. And with me one of his fucking investors too.’
‘And what?’ Frankie said. ‘You’re saying Jack could go help this Eddy Junior out?’
‘No, fuck that. EJ’s history. Took early retirement, didn’t he, Tam?’
‘Very early. About five a.m.’
‘Very funny,’ Riley said. ‘Almost as funny as mine. But, seriously, Frankie. He had to go. He was losing me money hand over fist.’
‘Ended up falling out of the first-floor window,’ Tam said, gazing evenly at Frankie. ‘Very careless. Perhaps he was drunk or sleep walking. Poor git split his head open like a melon on the pavement, but luckily he’d signed the lease back over to the boss just before he did.’
The way he said it suggested he was thinking how easy it would be for something similar to happen to Frankie one day.
‘Enough of the gory details, Tam,’ said Tommy. ‘The good news is that I’ve got real plans for it now. You know, to do it up. Expand its customer base and all that. And what I’m now thinking is that maybe there’s a place for young Jack in all this.’
‘Jack?’ said Tam in disbelief.
‘Yes, fucking Jack,’ snapped Riley. ‘For all we know he’s got a brain every bit as useful as Frankie’s here, hidden under that ridiculous barnet. Maybe it just needs channelling. You know, training up?’
‘Yeah,’ Frankie said, ‘maybe that’s it.’ A foot in the door? A fresh start? He couldn’t help thinking this might even work.
‘Good. Then that’s settled,’ said Riley. ‘Fix up a meeting, Tam. Get Frankie and Jack round to take a dekko, and let’s see if we can work something out.’
‘Thanks,’ Frankie said.
‘Oh, don’t thank me,’ Riley said, fixing him with that look again. ‘This is a favour. And we all know how those work, don’t we? How one day they get called in?’
‘Yeah,’ Frankie said.
‘Good.’ Tommy Riley raised his glass to the montage on the wall. ‘Happy days, eh?’ he said, before turning back to Tam. ‘Now bring us that bird with the big tits over here so I can chat her up. I’ve got a good mind to take her out for a ride in the limo, so I can fuck her hard up the arse.’
14
The weekend passed by in a blur, but not the kind Frankie was more used to last year – not the tequila kind. More the seriously hard bloody work and totally knackering kind.
Friday night’s launch party went on until three, when he finally managed to pour the last of his guests – a couple of battered bookies, who’d insisted on doing a bottle of JD and playing incoherently badly until neither of them could even hold a cue – into a cab. He managed to get himself about five hours’ fitful shut-eye after that, before his alarm went off.
Of course, it would have been nice to take the weekend off completely. He’d earned it. Taffy was round to pick up the competition table at nine and a good thing too. Frankie wanted it well away by the time the punters started turning up for the England v Scotland footie match that afternoon.
While Frankie was hauling round the seating banks to face the screens across the otherwise empty club with Xandra and Spartak, they were stopped in their tracks by the radio. Half the city of Manchester had been evacuated after a telephoned IRA warning. Christ. When the bomb blast had gone off, hundreds of people had still got injured all the same. They looked at one another, shocked and saddened. But depressing as it was, life went on. A steady flow of customers started turning up around noon and were pissed by two and screaming at the screens by kick-off at three. Spartak watched the door like a hawk, wary of any interlopers from the Swiss game turning up. But the only excitement on show this afternoon was watching England beat Scotland two nil. Frankie’s bet was still looking good then.
He fell asleep that night staring at the postcard from Mallorca on his bedside table and woke with the same questions rattling round his head. What if this card really was from her? What if his mum was alive and really was living in Mallorca? What if his dad was wrong and there really was a good reason why she’d not been in touch until now?
But what could he do about it? That was the even bigger question he just couldn’t shake. There was no address or phone number. Just a picture of some street in a foreign city. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
He drove round to Jack’s Sunday afternoon and checked in on him. The lad was on the up, and he was healing fast. Jack even had a bit of a spring in his step, which Frankie reckoned had a lot to do with Tiffany having slept over the night before. Frankie told him about his chat with the Old Man, about how he couldn’t see how that card was from her. Jack just nodded, changed the subject. Because that was it for him, wasn’t it? Yet another reason not to believe. Frankie wanted to tell him about what Riley had said too, but didn’t. For one thing, it still might not happen. For another, if Jack knew he was behind it, he’d not be half so keen.
Monday came and Frankie went over to meet Andy in his office in Haymarket House. Seemed like the launch had gone better than well, they’d knocked it out the park. Andy was well chuffed and already had a whole bunch of meetings chalked in. The Soho Open really looked like it was going to happen at last. Frankie’s life, it seemed, was finally looking up.
Then on Tuesday, he got the call.
*
‘So what’s this all about then?’ Jack asked as they wandered down Oxford Street to the Rope-a-Dope club. The stitches on his head were healing nicely. He’d lucked out, tell the truth, with the worst of the cut being on his scalp. All blending in nicely now with that topknot. Like Frankenstein modelling for Gap.
‘I dunno,’ Frankie lied. ‘I just got this message from Tommy, saying he wanted to see us both.’
‘Well I hope we’re not in trouble.’
‘Now why would you say that?’
‘No reason. Just, you know, it feels like getting dragged up in front of the headmaster, that’s all.’
Frankie had just been for a run, decked out in tracksuit and trainers. He held back a smile, cautiously not wanting to look too keen on whatever it was Riley had in mind regarding the gym – not until he’d at least heard the actual terms. ‘You remember that time we broke into school over the weekend and released all them helium balloons up into the school gym on the night before prize-giving?’
Jack laughed, sending his cigarette bouncing, sparking off the side of a bus. ‘Yeah, Cock-Eyed
Keats went bat shit when he couldn’t get them down.’
Cock-Eyed Keats. Their old headmaster. The balloons had been scrawled all over in black marker with words like ‘TITS’, ‘ARSE’ and ‘TWAT’. Nothing too blue – nothing that might actually have got them expelled if they’d been caught. More certificate fifteen than eighteen. But enough to make every kid gathered there in assembly practically piss their pants.
‘I thought he was going to have a bleeding heart attack,’ Frankie said, as they turned onto Hanway Street and on past Bradley’s Spanish Bar.
‘A myo-cardial-in-farction,’ they chimed in unison, impersonating their old headmaster, who’d taught them both biology.
‘And what, may I ask, might you two be laughing at?’ a deep voice boomed out.
Tam Jackson was leaning up against the wall, looking big enough and hard enough to be propping the whole bloody building up. Stood next to him was another bloke, an Adidas gym bag gripped in his tanned fist. Ten years younger than Tam. Wearing the same powder-blue suit Frankie had seen him in at the launch party in the club.
‘Tam . . .’ said Jack warily.
‘Jack . . .’ Tam nodded back.
‘All right,’ said Frankie. ‘Who’s your mate?’
‘Jesús.’
‘Hayzuz?’
‘Yeah. As in Jesus.’ Even Tam’s normally impenetrable expression gave a little twitch.
Jesus? Frankie tried not to smile. Tried, but didn’t succeed.
‘Amusing something, is it? Me?’ Jesús said, taking a solid step towards Frankie, all laced with intent. Something off about his accent. Spanish? Frankie couldn’t be sure.
‘No, mate. Nothing funny. Something you is not.’
Jesús watched him, unblinking, not sure if he was taking the piss. Probably a good thing too. Looked like he could handle himself and Frankie was hoping for a quiet start to the week. But then the moment passed. And Jesús took a packet of Gummi Bears, of all things, from his pocket and tipped a bunch into his mouth. Didn’t even offer Frankie one at all.
He glanced up at the building. A regular redbrick like the rest of the street. A chipped wooden inn sign hung from a couple of rusty chains, with what looked like two lumps of mud painted on it, probably meant to be gloves. Cracked, blacked-out windows studded the building left and right, one of them smashed in altogether. The one through which EJ had taken his dive? Frankie checked the pavement below, half expecting to see a red splodge, but thankfully there was nothing but the usual London mosaic of dried gob and gum.
Tam Jackson flicked his cigarette into the gutter and nodded them both inside, a nasty flash of darkness in his eyes, like he knew something they didn’t. Stepping through the open door into the gloomy interior, Frankie wondered if Tam’s face was the last thing EJ had seen before he’d smashed his brains out on the kerb.
‘Christ, I remember it now,’ Jack said, walking ahead.
Frankie screwed up his nose. Because, Christ, he remembered it too. The guff of Ralgex and stench of sweat and damp and mould and toilets too – the kind that hadn’t been flushed. Tommy hadn’t been kidding, this place really had seen better days.
A Capital Radio jingle blared out through the speakers way up in the high-ceilinged rafters. Some tune kicked in. Something about a firestarter. No kidding. This place could probably do with the purge.
‘I’d forgotten what a shithole this was,’ Jack hissed into Frankie’s ear.
Frankie ignored him, looking round at the big, echoing space, full of grunts and orders and the clanking of weights. A double-height ceiling like the Ambassador, with a glass-fronted office up there on the mezzanine and a viewing balcony running round looking down onto the two rings below.
One of them was empty and two lads were busy sparring in the other. In spite of the stink in here, it still got the old blood pumping, and Frankie made a beeline for the ring, passing eight or nine other fellahs working out with jump ropes and barbells and drumming on speed bags.
The trainer egging the two fighters on had to be seventy if he was a day. GoGo JoJo. The same bloke who’d first shoved Frankie in a ring. Still tough as teak, by the looks of him, too. The muscles on his bare arms stood out like knotted ropes. As well as being a boxer himself, he’d been a top blood man back in the day and had worked for Muhammad Ali in ’63. Frankie would bet his bottom dollar he still had the faded old snap of the two them together on him in his wallet now.
‘All right, kiddo,’ he said, clocking Frankie and grinning across. ‘Jack,’ he said, his smile a little less sincere.
Kiddo. He’d taught Frankie here between the age of thirteen and sixteen, before he’d moved on to kickboxing, and the Old Man twenty years before that.
‘Good to see you, JoJo.’ Frankie shook him warmly by the hand, trying not to wince, his knuckles nearly popping under the old man’s grip. ‘How’s things?’
JoJo rolled his bloodshot eyes round the room. ‘Been better. You heard about EJ?’
‘Fell out the window.’
‘Yeah. Fell. Right.’ JoJo glared across at Tam Jackson and looked for a second like he was going to say something, then turned back to Frankie and said, ‘So it’s true then? What I’ve been hearing? About who’s going to be running this place?’ He stared pointedly at Jack, who was gazing absent-mindedly up at a noticeboard.
‘Yeah.’
‘A little late in the day, ain’t it, for him to develop a love for the noble art?’ He was referring to the fact that Jack had only managed three weeks here before quitting, complaining the training was too hard.
‘Maybe. But you know what? Do us a favour, JoJo, and give him a chance at least to prove you wrong.’
‘All right,’ said JoJo, with a little click of his tongue. ‘Seeing as it’s you, I just might.’
‘How about you two carry on with your little reunion later?’ interrupted Tam. ‘Let’s not keep Mr Listerman waiting any longer than we have to, eh?’
JoJo ignored Tam, turning his attention back to the ring. ‘Guard up, for fuck’s sake, Jonny,’ he snapped. ‘How many times do I have to fucking well say . . .’
So Listerman the lawyer was here. Seemed like Riley really did mean business then. Frankie and Jack followed Tam further back into the building, past the multigyms and changing rooms. A couple of big lads in suits emerged from another door off to the left and marched past, both of them carrying black briefcases like they were guns. Slick-backed, suited and booted. Clearly not here to work out at all. Frankie thought he recognized one of them from round the club on Friday night. One of Riley’s boys.
‘What’s in there then?’ he asked Tam, nodding at the door.
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, there must be something, because two of your mates just came out.’
‘Nothing you need to concern yourself with,’ Tam said. ‘Got a separate entrance. Meaning it’s a separate business, OK?’
None of his business, then. Fine. Frankie got the message. Not sure he liked it, though. Not sure at all.
He followed Jack and Tam over to the right and up a steep flight of stairs. A heavy fireproof door at the top. An even heavier bloke standing sentry beside it. He knocked four times, then opened up the door and let them in.
The glass-fronted office Frankie had clocked from below, the one with the bird’s-eye view of the gym. Listerman was sat behind a wide, schoolteacher-type desk, punching numbers into a calculator, whilst scribbling down notes, his specs glinting in the harsh, fluorescent light. An air conditioner hummed. The old brass ship’s clock on the wall ticked.
‘I’ll be with you in just a sec. Grab yourselves a pew, boys,’ Listerman said, unsmiling, and without looking up.
15
Easier said than done. The only other chair in the room was a broken swivel seat with a torn orange cushion. Jack took it, flashing Frankie a cocky grin like he’d just beaten him in a game of musical chairs.
Frankie walked over to the giant pane of reinforced glass and gazed down into the recesses of t
he gym. If anything, it looked even worse from up here. The lighting flickered every now and then like it was about to short. Water pooled outside the changing room from some kind of leak, even the sprung floor of the ring on the left looked like it had a crack running down its right side.
‘Nut, anyone?’ Listerman said, putting down his pen and taking out a packet of dry-roasted peanuts from his jacket pocket.
‘No, thanks,’ said Frankie.
Jack lit a cigarette and Tam shook his head.
‘Fine. Suit yourselves.’ Listerman flipped a nut up into the air and caught it in his mouth. ‘So,’ he said, crunching down. ‘What do we all think?’
Jack blew smoke out. ‘About what?’
‘This. The gym.’
‘Well, it’s a total shitho—’ Jack started to say.
‘What he means to say is it’s got potential,’ Frankie said, standing by his brother’s side.
Jack laughed. ‘You need to get down Boots opticians, bruv.’
‘No, I mean it,’ Frankie said. ‘It just needs a bit of work.’
‘A bit?’
‘All right. A lot. But it’s not much different to the Ambassador like that. It just needs some tarting up.’
‘Exactly our thinking,’ Listerman said with a thin smile. Our making it clear he meant Riley’s firm. ‘And a good manager, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Frankie.
‘Someone with a bit of vision who can see the future – fitness.’
Jack took another drag of his fag. ‘Fitness?’
‘Exactly, Jack,’ said Listerman, reaching for another peanut. ‘Well spotted. A booming market, just like you say. For lots of young people with plenty of money to splash. There’s even this thing called boxercising. You heard of that? All the rage in Fulham, apparently.’
‘I guess,’ said Jack.
‘And guess right. And just look around. You’ve got the boxing gym downstairs, but there’s a whole floor up above here too that’s not being used at all. You can run all kinds of classes in it.’
‘Classes?’
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