Full of Money

by Bill James

  But Dean also had a considerable non-literary side. Now and then he could spot the hidden essentials of a problem. Pellotte listened to Dean’s thoughts about the TV producer, and saw some sense in them. Those conversations with Edgehill – on Gideon, and then at his place, 19a Bell Close – certainly did not satisfy Pellotte entirely. Dean might be only an aide, a chauffeur, a sidekick, but now and then he could judge a situation. Why else would Pellotte employ him?

  ‘Adrian,’ Dean said, as they neared Hodge’s place in north Whitsun, the glib, duplicitous, pulverizable sod, ‘I’ve been able to do a detailed language analysis of some statements made by Edgehill in that second interview, the domicile session, rather than the Gideon interview.’

  ‘Well, I expect so.’

  ‘I felt it would be unfair to set too much store by what he said in Gideon, because he could not be relaxed and properly thoughtful when crouched.’

  ‘Agreed, Dean.’

  ‘But in his drawing room, with tea, a more conducive situation.’

  ‘Why we went there.’

  ‘His words on that occasion may, I think, be reasonably subjected to scrutiny. Such as his remark about potential unrest, even violence, among mavericks in the firm – your firm, Adrian – over Dione and Bale. Presuming to pronounce on your firm, in that regard.’

  ‘Oh? Something dodgy there?’ Pellotte said.

  ‘His words: “You can take care of all that, I imagine. Par for the course.” What do we make of such a statement, Adrian?’

  ‘He wanted to reassure. That’s how I took it.’

  ‘“I imagine”.’ Dean replied.

  ‘What? You imagine what?’

  ‘No, I mean the way he said it. “I imagine”.’

  ‘Oh? How did he say it?’

  ‘It’s sort of cool, offhand, superior Mr TV Executive speaking. Now hear this! As though he doesn’t give a fuck what we do – can’t be bothered at his altitude with definitions – but he fucking imagines we’ll manage it somehow or another because we are we.’

  ‘I don’t notice that kind of thing, Dean. It’s subtle.’

  ‘What I mean about you, Adrian – generous to people. Almost to a fault, I have to say. ‘Or take “par for the course”.’

  ‘“Par for the course”? He’s suggesting we’ve usually got matters under control, Dean. It’s a golfing term, meaning a normal performance given the nature of the ground. Yes, he wanted to reassure.’

  ‘This was tacked on.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘“Par for the course.” I noticed the way his voice went down but immediately picked up again. “You can take care of all this, I imagine.” Then a pause. And, as if he decided he hadn’t been chilly and dismissive enough, he extends the insult, makes it more general. “Par for the course”.’

  ‘Insult? Surely, he’s saying we don’t have to worry because we know how to deal with such matters. Likewise, we’ll handle it if there’s any further bother over the playground journalist, Tasker.’

  ‘Oh, that. But what’s Mr Edgehill telling us, Aid?’ Dean said.

  ‘Well—’

  ‘He’s telling us he’s got us summed up and classified in his TV executive mind and that he considers you and me a couple of very capable career thug-hoods, accustomed to wiping out opposition on more or less a fucking day-to-day basis.’

  ‘Possibly he has a—’

  ‘He comments, we can “take care of all that”. What does “all that” refer to? He speaks like it’s a bucketful of things, not worth the bother of listing. But, in reality, “all that” concerns guarding your position at the head of this firm and, crucially, it ultimately concerns your dear daughter, Dione. But to Edgehill these are trivial problems which can be “taken care of” in a standard, bloodletting style. “Take care of” – just a soft-talk way of describing utter brutality – a disgusting slight on you, and those who do your bidding. Possibly a hidden reference also to Tasker – who was “taken care of”.’

  ‘Yes, Tasker. Occasionally people do have to be “taken care of” in our scene,’ Pellotte said, ‘Not as we might “take care of” an elderly relative or stray cat, but “taken care of” in our own manner such as, for instance, this trip to Gordon Basil Hodge. I’m afraid Gordon might have to be “taken care of”.’

  ‘You know about these possibilities, Adrian, and I know about them, but is this something an outsider should speak of to us so frankly, so matter-of-factly in his own extremely average property? And then, when we’re discussing possible uprisings among the staff, what does he say? “But these are only your tribesmen. They’re not going to disrespect you, Adrian, surely.” A delightful term – “tribesmen”? What does it make our people sound like? What does it make you sound like? I hope I would never slip into racism, but isn’t he talking to us as if we’re some primitive, spear and loincloth lot in Africa or South America, you as face-painted jungle headman? “They’re not going to disrespect you, Adrian, surely.” He’s picked up that word, “disrespect”, because he thinks this is how villain roughs talk here. It’s condescending, offensive. If anyone’s showing disrespect, it’s Larry Edgehill.’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘What does all this suggest, Adrian?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘It suggests that, although he’s having what seems to be a nice, serene, tea-based conversation with two Whitsun neighbours, he’s thinking the whole time, I’ve let a couple of lout gangsters into my home and must get them out fucking fast. All right, in some ways he is not an outsider. He lives on Whitsun. But he goes off to work in television every day, and a top job in television, not shifting scenery. Untypical for Whitsun, I think you’ll concede that. He is hardly a true part of the community as you and I are, Aid, and proud to be. I think it’s possible he would like to find a place right off Whitsun, if he could afford it. Well, just as Rupert Bale wants an exit from Temperate . . .’

  ‘Edgehill is—’

  ‘Take this: I mentioned to him – knowing it would be your wish – I mentioned that you could arrange for his car to be fully honoured and swathed in security on the estate if he bought one. He gives the big ignoral. Why? There could be two reasons, neither very comradely. First, he doesn’t intend staying here. Second, he does not wish to seem indebted, beholden to Adrian Pellotte. “Thanks so much for the offer, Dean, but stick it up your arse. I’m not one of his fucking tribesmen. I wear a shirt, changed every day.”’

  They reached Larch Street and did a couple of slow circuits of the block, to check for police vehicles about on inquiries or patrolling. If officers saw Pellotte’s car parked at Hodge’s house they might make guesses and decide to try a bit of nosing. ‘We’re only doing our job, Adrian.’ So, what’s their job? To nose. This would possibly turn out awkward later in any court case about what happened to Hodge in this possibly boisterous scenario. Although civvy witnesses on Whitsun could be easily discouraged and/or bought, this didn’t apply to some police, and finding out which it did apply to often took a while, with the danger of errors.

  Pellotte saw nothing to trouble them on the first reconnoitre, but he told Dean to repeat it, taking in a couple of extra streets this time. ‘Maybe you give too much attention to Edgehill’s phrasing, Dean,’ he said.

  ‘And then his remark, “A new friendship based on shared musical tastes sounds good for both of them, Dione and Bale,”’ Dean replied. He put on a clipped, teacherly voice for that. ‘Those two, Dione and Rupert Bale have both just emerged from emotional crises, yet Edgehill thinks – or pretends he thinks – that if they hear a bit of Haydn and Mozart they’ll immediately feel OK again, and a healing romance will kick in. “Get someone to play a few bars of The Magic fucking Flute and she’ll be fine.” Flippant? Deeply heartless?’

  They stopped outside Hodge’s place and sat for a moment watching it. The second round-the-houses tour had been OK, too: nothing on the lurk.

  ‘Certainly, we can return to Edgehill if necessary and become more pointed,’ Pel
lotte said. Dean often needed to be quietened down. He’d let anxiety run him, anxiety drifting towards rage sometimes if he thought Pellotte or the firm endangered. On the up side, this kept Dean alert. But occasionally he frothed about trivialities. He seemed to think only he saw the seriousness of certain problems. He’d go at them super-hard. He regarded Pellotte as too laid back and kindly.

  Although such underling qualities remained pathetically strong in Dean, Pellotte realized he might want to bring him towards heir-ship in due course. Someone must take over Whitsun and Happy Gardening Solutions when Pellotte felt he’d had enough and wanted to withdraw. No job for a daughter, nor for a son-in-law. Not one like Rupert Bale, anyway. One of the most crucial obligations of leadership was to ensure a suitable succession. Think of the Queen, worried about Prince Charles and his speeches and farming notions.

  ‘You’ve always been good at the step-by-step approach, Adrian.’

  ‘What other approach is there? Which other approach is rational?’ Pellotte said, pulling on gloves. Dean lacked subtlety and the larger vision. Could they be taught, or was the defect in his DNA? ‘If Hodge has the cash handy and will cough in full at once we take it and forget about anything fully punitive for now, Dean. He’ll probably call it “an administrative slip-up”.’

  ‘Oh, he’s got the words, all right. Sometimes I wonder if you’re too tender and forgiving,’ Dean said.

  ‘Perhaps just a temporary spell of . . . well, moderation. At this juncture.’ Pellotte thought that the sight of him, Adrian Pellotte himself, personally, rather than staff, in Larch on the doorstep might swiftly free up any loot squirrelled by Gordon around the house, the congenital thieving bastard. Adrian did not want those ‘repercussions’, especially today. Dean’s paper on ‘Lady Widmerpool’s Schoolboy Chum’ in the Powell tale, Books Do Furnish a Room, was scheduled for quite early, and it could be a drawback if he’d failed to recover his settled pulse properly because Hodge turned foolishly obstructive, as people sometimes could when in a money dispute.

  According to the dossier, Hodge had an old style .45 Sokolovsky automatic, a model described a few decades ago as the most expensive pistol in the world, and probably still capable. It was like that posturing twerp, Hodge, to go for something glamorized by history. Pellotte and Dean carried nine mm Brownings, thirteen rounds apiece. But Pellotte hoped none of these weapons would be used today. He didn’t want to go into the Powell conference smelling of cordite. Dean had a drily witty way of delivering literary talks, and breathlessness after possible excitement at Hodge’s house might mess up his timing and ability with consonants.

  Even if there were only non-firearms violence, Pellotte would hate to see torn, bloody knuckles taking hold of a lectern in such a setting. Faunt Castle had become an arts and culture centre with hireable rooms at low cost, and Pellotte didn’t want its reputation shaken by crude signs of violence. Dean had introduced him way back to Powell’s work, and Pellotte felt real gratitude. Dean had read the twelve books many times over, of course, while serially jugged. Dean said he’d thought now and then that the overall title should be changed to A Dance to the Music of Doing Time. Dean’s astonishing memory and the many lock-up re-readings meant he could repeat pages in their entirety from several of the Dance volumes.

  Pellotte did not mind too much having to listen over-and-over to these very unnecessary fucking performances. After all, as Pellotte saw it, the main point about Dean was the certainty that if a blitz squad came over from Temperate one afternoon meaning to disfigure, maim or kill him – him, Adrian Pellotte – Dean would try very nearly everything to prevent it. Yes, very nearly everything.

  Naturally, they had packed the BMW boot with complete changes of clothes and shoes as well as moist face flannels and towels, first-aid gear, blood transfusion equipment and an oxygen cylinder with mask, for their personal use. Pellotte recognized that the visit might turn out complicated, with possible rips and/or staining and contusions. But he hoped all this gear would prove unnecessary. Between them he and Dean should be able to see off Hodge if things went that way, but Pellotte would try to avoid any type of rough-house pro tem.

  Hodge and his family had an interesting property. When Pellotte and Dean knocked, he came swiftly to the door, wearing a blue roll-topped sweater and navy jogging trousers. Pellotte felt at once that these clothes did not look at all the kind of outfits convicts on their way to execution wore in, say, Texas, but at a push they’d do. Pellotte considered the clobber and Hodge’s bubbling attitude made him seem extremely relaxed – the two-timing, embezzling rat. Of course, he might have spotted the BMW doing its preparatory circling just now and readied his larcenous, filthy self. One of the special strengths of doorstepping was shock, and this might have been lost.

  Hodge cried: ‘Adrian, Dean! Here’s a happy surprise. I understood you were away today, out of town at a conference on Anthony Powell. He said it “Pole” though, didn’t he, so as to knock the Welshness out of it? But, obviously, I’ve been expecting a visit.’

  ‘Yes?’ Pellotte replied. ‘You saw the car?’

  ‘Saw the car? No,’ Hodge said, ‘but I meant on account of this exceptionally tricky Dione situation. You’re bound to seek support. And I . . . I am equally bound to provide it. Am proud and delighted to provide it. Not to mention the shit flying your way because of the journalist who met his deadline, as it were.’ Hodge stood back in the doorway. He made a real sympathy thing of this, like an Eskimo welcoming travellers out of the blizzard and into his igloo.

  The exterior of the house was unattractive, the same as all the others round about, but Hodge and his partner had done the inside minimalist, probably under top-notch professional advice not necessarily gay, and to Pellotte it looked wonderfully spacious and light, the walls pastel shaded and with, here and there, a good, framed surrealist print, but nothing crudely bright and unnerving. The dots, broccoli heads, JCBs, biplanes, panthers, trombones and halberds in these pictures seemed to fit in with one another very well.

  Letitia, Hodge’s partner, must be out. The firm’s personnel records showed Hodge had two daughters – Delphine and Maisy – both away at boarding school in Cheltenham, now near the end of term. One girl was by Hodge, one previous. Pellotte thought such first names fair enough for this kind of family. They had a total difference in sound, and if Hodge shouted for one of them during a vacation because he urgently needed somebody to get help, it would be obvious which he meant, not as if he had a Jane and a Joan, or a Celia and a Delia.

  Hodge took Dean and Adrian to the lounge, and they sat in excellent blue leather chairs, the arms and legs shiny tubular steel of what seemed prime quality, and possibly fashionable among some. Little other furniture. Hodge didn’t drink or, apparently, keep alcohol in his house and brought from the kitchen three glasses of barley water on a tray decorated with what looked to Pellotte like Old Masters illustrations, including one by Bronzino. Even on barley water, this lad, Hodge, could really smile. The smile had a kind of true authenticity to it, a false kind. The smile helped make him a fine street salesman. Pellotte recently watched a TV rerun of the Oliver Stone film, Nixon, which began with a sales director instructing a subordinate on the value of a smile, and showing him one. But this looked a foully unbelievable, trickster’s smile, and referred, of course, to President Nixon’s. But Hodge’s smile had terrific depth and, if you did not know him, you could easily believe it meant unrestrained friendship. Punters – including punters new to Gordon – all punters felt confident as to quality of the stuff he offered, and reasonableness of price, from Ecstasy and resin through skunk to H. Suppose things could not be resolved, Hodge would be an undoubted loss to the trade, but Pellotte had to think about the ethics of the situation, and if Hodge did represent unfortunate finagling within the firm he could not be excused. It would get to be a contagion otherwise.

  ‘No, Gordon,’ Dean said, ‘not to do with Dione or the journalist, God rest his soul, but—’

  ‘I knew you’d be
getting around everybody, lobbying to see who are your allies in the Dione matter, Adrian,’ Hodge said.

  Dean said: ‘No, that’s not it, Gordon. We—’

  ‘Well, I want to say straight out that I’m with you all the way on this one, Adrian,’ Hodge said. ‘I expect you heard the buzz and decided in your kindly fashion that you must drop in and show your gratitude. But no need, I assure you, Adrian.’

  ‘Which buzz, Gordon?’ Pellotte asked.

  ‘That I’ve been talking your case to people in the firm – people potentially extreme. I mean extreme in a negative sense. I’ve argued for Dione’s absolute right to a love life – if I may so call it – no matter where the man comes from. This is surely fundamental for a democratic state. Good Lord, we’re almost into the new millennium! Don’t tell me we’re reverting to “arranged” courtships, as prevail in some countries. I’ve demanded restraint of colleagues. Really, demanded it. Plus, I’ve attempted to choke off unpleasant rumour about the death and so on of Gervaise Manciple Tasker, Dean. I do believe I can impose some influence. There are people on Whitsun – our people – who would use their own methods to end that relationship between Dione and Rupert Bale, as you know, Aid. They claim to feel stained by it. So far, I’ve been able to hold them in check. Difficult work, but entirely worthwhile. And you’ve had a whisper about my efforts, have you, Aid, on both the Dione and Tasker front? The Dione situation being hugely more important, naturally. I’m thrilled you can regard me as so much an ally that you make this personal call, despite your commitment to the cultural occasion at Faunt Castle today and tomorrow, I gather.’

  ‘You’re twenty-one thousand pounds fucking short for October, give or take a twenty,’ Dean said.