A Cool Breeze on the Underground

by Don Winslow

  21

  Allie was stoned out of her gourd.

  When Neal made it over to the Earl’s Court flat around eight o’clock, he found her pacing the floor, muttering a semicoherent diatribe against television game shows, particularly British ones where the contestants didn’t win any money worth mentioning.

  “No Frigidaires, either. No dinette sets, no living room combinations, washer-dryers. No Toyotas. No trips to Honolulu!”

  “C’mon in,” Vanessa said to Neal. “Colin’s not here, though.”

  Neal knew that already. He had already placed Colin back in Leicester Square. “Where is he?”

  “Taking care of business.”

  Spotting Neal, Allie switched gears and launched into an assault on American men, particularly the ones from New York who think they know everything about screwing, but don’t.

  “They’re pigs. Pigs! New York boys just want to get into your pants, and then they don’t know what to do there. I hate that!”

  Vanessa disappeared into the bathroom.

  “And ice cream,” Allie muttered. “You can’t get any decent ice cream in this lousy country. They give you some shit called ice cream, but it isn’t. Neal, did you bring any real ice cream with you?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  She stepped over to him and looked him in the eyes. “You’re no good, Neal. You know that? No damn good at all.”

  She said it with such utter sincerity and then gave him a smile so dazzling that he couldn’t quite believe she was strung out. He couldn’t help liking her. It was almost as if she was aware of herself, making fun of the American bitch for everyone’s entertainment.

  “And the weather,” she continued, “it’s too fucking hot. We sang that in school glee club once. ‘It’s too fucking hot, it’s too fucking hot

  “Ίt’s too darn hot.’”

  “Yeah, it’s too darn fucking hot. It’s supposed to be foggy and rainy. In all the movies, it’s foggy and rainy. You ever see Sherlock Holmes with a tan? But I haven’t seen any fog or any rain since I got here and that’s weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks and what is Nessa doing to her hair?”

  “Shaving half of it off,” Vanessa answered.

  Neal looked into the bathroom. Sure as shit, she was shaving half of it off—the left half.

  Fascinated, Allie floated into the bathroom. “Why?”

  “Bored.”

  “May I watch?”

  “Sure, love, but you can’t help. You’d slice me to ribbons.”

  Allie lay down on the tile floor and played with Vanessa’s falling locks. Neal stood in the doorway.

  “Alice,” he asked, “do you have any dates tonight?”

  “Do I have any dates tonight? Yes, Troy Donahue is coming over and we’re going to the malt shop. No. Frankie Avalon and I are going to a beach party. He broke up with that bitch with the boobs. Because he loves me. No … Wally Cleaver and I are going to the drive-in and I’m going to teach him how to make a girl happy, except I think he really loves Lumpy Rutherford.

  “Do I have any dates tonight? You think you’re Colin’s administrative assistant now? Vice pimp, that’s pretty good. No, I don’t have any dates tonight.”

  “It’s okay with me.”

  “Oh, goody. Neal, go get us some real ice cream, okay? Some real, real ice cream. Chocolate ice cream. Yummy.”

  “I have to talk to Colin.”

  “You have to talk with Colin?”

  “How does this look?” Vanessa asked them. The left side of her head was bald. The right half was a cascade of magenta locks.

  “Hike it,” Neal said. “A lot.”

  He turned to leave.

  Allie followed him. “I just remembered another song we sang in good old glee club. Wanna hear it?”

  You could take her right now, Neal thought. Whisk her off on some excuse and be gone before Vanessa ever thought to ring the phone box…. He hurried down the stairs, and could still hear her singing.

  “ ‘A precious gem is what you are. You’re Daddy’s bright and shining star …’ ”

  He caught the district line train at Earl’s Court, changed to the Piccadilly Line at South Kensington, and rode it to Leicester Square. The long wooden escalator carried him to the street level. He found Colin in the square, standing under the statue of the Earl of Leicester, The inscription on the base read: THERE IS NO DARKNESS BUT IGNORANCE.

  “Hello, rugger,” Colin said. Crisp sat on the ground beside him in his faithful-dog pose.

  “How’s business?”

  “Buggers are tying up the phone,” Colin answered, pointing to a queue outside the phone box.

  “Shout you a pint?”

  Colin looked around for a second, then said, “Why not? Crisp, mind the shop, there’s a good lad.”

  They walked to a small pub on Floral Street. Neal found a table by the window and brought two pints over.

  “I looked for you over at your place earlier,” he said.

  “Office hours.”

  “Alice is wrecked.”

  Colin shrugged. “‘At’s ’er business, isn’t it?”

  “Could affect your business. High rollers don’t like junkies.”

  Colin stared out the window. “Well, rugger, ’er business or my business, it’s none of your business.”

  Neal glanced out the window. “Might be.”

  “Ow’s ‘at?”

  “I need a girl.”

  Colin laughed. “Not Alice. I’ll set you up with someone else.”

  “I need a girl for a job.”

  Colin took a long draw on his pint before he said, “My da was on the dole is ‘ole fookin’ life. He was always tellin’ me, ‘Son, ge’ a union job. Ge’ a union job an’ you can fook off your ‘ole life.’ That was my da’s great ambition.

  “Is this a union job, Neal?”

  “No.”

  “We’re interested.”

  “It’s a one-shot deal, Colin. Lots of money but very tricky. No mistakes. My ass is on the line.”

  “How much money?”

  “Enough you won’t have to send Alice out on any more dates.”

  Either a trace of shame passed across Colin’s face or he was even a better actor than Neal thought.

  “I love ’er, Neal.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s the job?”

  Neal shook his head. “Ill tell you tomorrow. The Serpentine. One o’clock.”

  Because you can’t make it too simple, Neal thought. And you have to get him into a pattern of following instructions. Turn the relationship around. Otherwise, the whole thing will screw up.

  “Why all the bother?” Colin asked.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes, rugger.”

  The tail had picked Neal up in the square and followed him to the pub. He waited across the street and then stayed with him back to the hotel. He stayed a long way back and was real careful. The kid was supposed to be a pro.

  Levine answered the phone.

  “I’m calling in,” Neal said.

  “Good boy.”

  “Take your fucking tail off me.”

  “What?”

  “Next time, send someone knows what he’s doing.”

  “Hey, Neal—”

  “Take him off.” Neal hung up.

  Levine looked at Graham and Lombardi. “That Neal is some piece of work. Little shit thinks I put a tail on him. Asshole.”

  Graham’s rubber hand ground into his real one. He had trained Neal better than to see tails that weren’t there.

  “Back off.”

  “The kid’s on to something, I can smell it.”

  The phone connection from London was bad, so he had to repeat himself. “He made you. Back off.”

  “He didn’t make me.” “Who’s paying you? Off!” “You got it.”

  The guy hung up the phone. He was pissed off. The kid was a pro. A real cute one.

  Two scotches and a hot bath didn’t settle Neal down much. That
fucking Levine, he thought. That fucking Levine is going to blow this whole thing. If I as much as smell that guy again …

  22

  Tuesday morning neal decided to have a whopping big breakfast. He picked a table in the dining room that gave him an easy view of the door and dug into his Times, along with two fried eggs, hot cereal, toast, bacon, sausage, and a pot of coffee. He took his sweet time about it, but nobody joined him.

  Then he went for a walk. The day was a scorcher, a real bitch, but if they wanted to play games, he’d play games. Nobody picked him up at the hotel door, certainly not the guy from last night, but it would be just like Friends to show him one tail so they could pin a different one on him. And he just wasn’t ready for company on this thing—not yet.

  He took a right down Piccadilly and set a torrid pace to Green Park tube station. He bought a 20p ticket from the machine and headed down the stairs, changed his mind, and walked back out on the street. He strolled down Queen’s Lane, nice and slow, stopped at a cart and bought an ice cream, thought about Allie, and turned around and went back to the tube station. But now he picked up the pace, fast and hard, so if anyone was following him, it would cost them a hell of a sweat. He took the train to Leicester Square, rode the escalator to street level, rode the escalator back down to the trains, and took a Northern Line train to Tottenham Court Road, where he got off the train, switched to the Central Line, and continued on to Bond Street, where he switched to the Jubilee Line and rode it back to Green Park.

  By this time, he was convinced that Levine had called his boy off, and he was soaked with sweat and covered with grime, but he felt good, as if he was working again, as if he was in first-class gumshoe shape. He was psyching himself up; talking himself into it; going undercover, deep undercover.

  He could see the boat-hire dock on the Serpentine from the deck of the restaurant. He sipped an iced coffee and waited. He had a good hour before Colin was supposed to show up. Time enough to check out the terrain, time enough to be ready if anyone was setting him up. Neal Carey wasn’t taking any chances.

  “I cant swim, rugger,” Colin warned as he gently lowered himself into the little squat paddleboat.

  “I’ll save you,” Neal answered. He watched Allie, Crisp, and Vanessa getting into another boat. Neal was having a good time, and taking a little spin around the manmade lake in the center of Hyde Park wasn’t a bad way to kill a sweaty afternoon. And he enjoyed Colin’s discomfiture.

  They paddled out toward the middle of the Serpentine and then just let the boat drift. Neal placed his jacket on the bottom of the boat and lay down on top of it. It felt gloriously cool down there. He left Colin sitting up in the heat. In the distance, he could hear Crisp and Vanessa singing at the top of their lungs—some song he didn’t recognize but guessed was a butchery of Gilbert and Sullivan.

  “So what is it, rugger?”

  Careful, Neal lad, he thought to himself. This is it.

  “My client is over here buying a book.”

  “I hope you’re ‘avin’ me on.”

  “The book is worth twenty thousand pounds.”

  That got your attention, didn’t it, Colin?

  “What book is worth twenty thousand quid?” Colin asked suspiciously.

  “The Pickle.”

  He went through the whole thing. About Smollett, the first and second editions, Lady Vane, the trip to Italy, the missing volumes.

  When he had finished, Colin said, “So?”

  “So our client, the guy I’m doing security for, just bought it for ten thousand pounds.”

  “Ten in’t twenty, lad.”

  “And I know someone who’ll buy it for twenty, Colin baby.”

  And I have you hooked, Neal thought. Colin was only a silhouette at the moment, but the silhouette was leaning way forward, listening hard.

  “You can get ’old of this book?”

  “With your help.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  The boat rocked suddenly. Neal saw a head bobbing in the water. Then the head came over the side of the boat.

  “Alice, for bleeding Jesus’s sake … ?”

  “I felt like a swim.”

  She hauled herself into their boat. “I was lonely,” she said. “I missed you. Besides, look what those assholes are doing over there.”

  Those assholes Crisp and Vanessa were ramming their paddleboat into any other boat they could catch. They were at this moment in hot pursuit of a pair of Japanese tourists. Security guards at the dock were climbing into a rowboat.

  “Jump back in, love. Me and Neal are ‘aving a business discussion.”

  “Let her stay. It’s about her.”

  “What about me?”

  “I want you to ball a guy.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand pounds.”

  “What, is he really gross or something?”

  They barely outpaddled the water cops, who had picked Crisp and Vanessa up and wanted the whole gang. The Japanese couple had abandoned ship, however, necessitating a rather complicated bilingual rescue effort, which gave Neal and his crew time to paddle to shore, dump the boat in some bushes, and run out to Rotten Row. They hailed a cab at Alexandra Gate.

  “Westminster Bridge,” Neal told the cabbie.

  “I’m not balling anybody on Westminster Bridge,” said Allie.

  “Ten thousand,” Colin said.

  “Five, and there’s more to it.”

  “I’m not balling anybody on Westminster Bridge.”

  “Ten or forget it.”

  “Forget what?”

  “Where on Westminster Bridge?” the driver asked.

  “No place,” said Allie.

  “Just on the Embankment is fine.”

  Neal paid the cabbie and started across the pedestrian walkway on the bridge. The view up and down the Thames was one of his favorites. It might be the best spot to see London, he thought, and he stopped about halfway across to take it in. Off to his right was a postcard view of the tower of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. To his right stretched Victoria Embankment. Right in front of him was Colin.

  “Seven, then.”

  Neal turned his back and leaned over the railing on the downriver side, “Thursday night, Goldman’s wife is going to a concert at Albert Hall. Goldman doesn’t want to go, says he hates that stuff and he’s going to the latest James Bond flick at the Odeon. But what he really wants is to get laid. I mean laid. He wants me to set him up. So I told him okay, I’ve worked it out. He’s going to go to my room to do it, in case the old lady gets bored, comes back early.”

  “What—”

  “Shut up and listen. He keeps the books in a locked briefcase in his room. While he’s making happy in my room, I’m going to be in his … guarding the briefcase.”

  “They’re goin’ to figure out it was you.”

  “No shit. The agency will send people. In fact, I know just the guy they’ll send. Guy named Levine. Very big, very tough. I’m going to need to disappear for a while. Can you handle that?”

  “Sure.”

  “If things get rough?”

  “I’ll get rougher.”

  Neal leaned farther over the railing, pretending to think it over. Let Colin see thousands of quid slipping away. “I don’t know, Colin. I’m taking a big risk here …”

  “Take it.”

  Neal turned around and rested his back against the railing. He took his time checking out the boats and barges in the river below him. He studied Waterloo Bridge as if he was thinking of buying it. He looked from Colin to Allie to Colin to Allie and back again. Allie could not care less. Colin would sell Alice to the gypsies for a shot at five thousand pounds. Neal knew a few things about scams. One thing was that you never talk anybody into a scam; you let them talk you into it. He ran his reluctant-virgin act for just a few more seconds.

  “All right,” he said. “But it’s going to take some preparation.”

  “One
more time,” Neal said.

  A collective sigh filled Colin’s flat. They’d already been at it for three hours and gone through it several dozen times, and fucking Neal had banned all alcohol, hash, pills, and smack from the planning session.

  “Come on,” he repeated.

  Crisp recited, “Colin and me wait outside the ’otel—”

  “And—”

  “An’ I try to dress like a human being. Neal points out missus goin’ as she comes ou’ the door. Colin and me follow ’er an’ stick to ’er like glue.”

  “Good. Why?”

  “Ya didn’t ask why before,” Crisp whined.

  “Tell me why, you can have a pint.”

  Four people instantly volunteered the answer. Neal hushed them and looked at Crisp. “Yes?”

  “Because, if the missus gets bored a’ the concert—which personally I can’t imagine—she might decide to come ‘ome an’ that would fuck up the ’ole thing.”

  “Correct.” Neal heard echoes of Joe Graham telling him to always fill his lies with lots of details. You have to keep Crisp and Colin out of the way for a while, so give them a mission and make them concentrate on it.

  Neal took a bottle from his bag and dangled it in front of Crisp. “Then what would you do?”

  “Get to a phone box and ring you.”

  “Where?”

  “Goldman’s room.”

  “When?”

  Crisp grinned proudly. “Right away.”

  Neal tossed him the bottle and looked at Colin.

  “I stay with the missus and find a way to stall ’er.”

  “But…”

  “I don’t ’urt ’er.”

  Neal raised his eyebrows.

  “At all.”

  Neal looked at Allie, who was making a very successful effort to look indifferent. Colin snatched the book out of her hand, opened the window, and threw the book into the street. Allie rolled her eyes.

  “I get all dressed up,” she said, staring pointedly at Neal, “like a little lady … and I wait in the bar.”

  “Where…”

  “Where I have one drink, that’s all, and I wait for Neal to come get me. Neal introduces me to Mr. Wonderful and leaves. I ball his brains out and I take my time about it. I make it last. Then I take my money and come straight back here.”