Full of Money

by Bill James

  ‘We can’t overlook that, Gordon.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Hodge said. Pellotte thought Hodge’s very amused but still entirely convincing smile said it would be crazy for anyone, including him, Hodge, to think they might overlook it. ‘Or, actually nearer twenty-three, by my reckoning.’

  Hodge: spare, mid-height and long faced – the sort of face that might look sulky and hostile, but ready nearly always to turn to smiles, though, obviously, not if he was getting beaten shitless, for openers. His eyes managed integrity and friendship at consummate speed from a neutral start. He wore a couple of rings on his right hand, both triple amethysts, as far as Pellotte could make out, and one of those bulky watches on his left wrist, just below the edge of the sweater arm, with several dials, for different time zones, or blood pressure readings, or barometric forecasts, or luminous compass bearings to guide underwater diving explorers in a black lake.

  The firm ran a £10,000 prize competition for ‘Trader of the Year’. Hodgy had scooped it three times, though, admittedly, he’d been second on the last occasion, but moved up to first when the original winner, Gladstone Milo Naunton, got shot dead in a territory spat by something of very small calibre, but effective. This occurred only twenty-four hours before formal announcement of the award.

  In a way, Pellotte admired those who used small calibre guns because they indicated precision and the coolness to achieve it. Almost anyone could blast a target’s head or chest away with a .45, but a .22 had to be pinpoint. He wondered where Hodge kept the .45 Sokolovsky. He didn’t have it on him. A harness under the sweater would cause an obvious bulge, and so would a pistol in his jeans. The Sokolovsky was a big gun, as pistols went. Pellotte and Dean kept the Brownings in the side pockets of their jackets. Probably, Hodge would spot the outlines, and he should know, anyway, that these were their usual weapons. But that might be for the good – deterrence.

  Gladstone Milo Naunton’s removal during that turf trouble could have caused chaos. However, Pellotte had ordered at once that Hodge must go to top place following the death: a kind of walkover, a walkover over a corpse. Some colleagues and associates of Gladstone had wanted him to be named as ‘honorary’ or ‘posthumous’ winner in tribute to his work in the period, but Pellotte pointed out as tactfully as he could that the contest was not to find ‘Deceased Trader of the Year’. He insisted the competition must look forward as well as to the period just past, and this required someone living to collect the distinction. Tasker, the journalist, had been quizzing people on Whitsun about this difficult management episode, and Pellotte thought his curiosity very unnecessary. Financially, he certainly helped Gladstone’s live-in and probably principal boyfriend, Bert (Albert) Jutland Marsh, for the present. That was only basic humanity.

  Dean said: ‘I’ve gone over the figures taking into account all due variables, and, in fact, allowing a one point five per cent shortfall factor in your favour for poor street weather from the eleventh to the thirteenth, and for that special police clampdown on discos and raves in the third week. We still come to a twenty-one thousand pounds plus gap. Adrian likes to run a tidy operation. It’s . . . well, it’s of his essence, a passed-down attitude of his family, like politics with the Kennedys, or the Redgraves and theatre.’

  ‘Famed for it. Extensively and justly praised for it,’ Hodge said with full enthusiasm in his tone. ‘Mention Adrian’s name far, far afield and people will immediately refer to the notable abstention from hand jewellery and then very soon afterwards to the tidiness of his operation.’ He glanced down at the amethysts, his horse-collar face shifty for a moment in possible shame at his own skittish trinkets. ‘Ringlessness, tidiness, these are synonymous with Adrian. This is what I tell people agitating now about Dione and Bale. I ask them how . . . how they can turn against a chief of Adrian’s solid, earned reputation merely because his daughter chooses to step out of line.’ Quickly, he softened this: ‘That is, again, in their embittered, palsied view, to step out of line. It’s not a view I or several others in the firm can share. I say to the anti-Dione lobby, “Please judge Adrian Pellotte as Adrian Pellotte, not just as the father of a supposedly headstrong, heart-strong woman. Consider his enormous mercantile achievements over almost a decade, his status on Whitsun and afield. Would you dare act against him in person? Yet, by acting against Dione, or even against Rupert Bale, you would, in fact, be acting against Adrian.” In their rabid state they don’t seem to have realized that.’

  ‘So where’s the fucking absent takings, Gord?’ Dean replied.

  ‘Of course, I realize this is also a concern for you, Adrian,’ Hodge said. ‘Comparatively very minor as against worries over Dione and the dead journalist – a lucre matter only – but still indubitably a concern.’

  ‘No question you owe it,’ Dean said.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Hodge said.

  ‘So, where?’ Dean grew edgy, impatient. ‘Listen, Gordon,’ he said, ‘not to press unduly, but I’m billed to give a lecture on a book topic. It’s in the printed programme. This is a quite educated gathering – people from northern universities and so on, and Boston USA.’

  ‘I’d heard about that,’ Hodge said. ‘Admirable. I think it’s grand to have interests outside the work environment.’

  ‘I can’t be late,’ Dean said. ‘It’s disrespectful to the author concerned and to other members of the Society.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Hodge said. ‘I’ll admit that this, what you might call “missionary work” on behalf of Adrian and Dione among the disaffected in our organization, has preoccupied me, rather. And the Tasker whispers. Hence, my self-accounting sessions fell behind a little – the major payment handed in, of course, but then these little catch up sums sidelined momentarily.’

  ‘Understandable,’ Pellotte said. ‘Thank you for your intervention, Gordon. I speak for myself and Dione.’

  ‘Where is it, for fuck’s sake?’ Dean Feston said.

  ‘The money?’ Hodge replied.

  ‘The money,’ Dean said.

  ‘Naturally, I have it ready,’ Hodge said. ‘But, yes, nearer twenty-three than twenty-one. That might be a result of your kindly pro-Gordon October weighting, Dean! Sorry for the delay. Of course, I had a feeling you would call some time before Christmas re the Dione tensions and Tasker, and decided we could settle up then – though, as I say, I didn’t think you’d come on such a notable day as the opening of the Powell conference. The money’s in two packets.’ His right hand held the glass of barley water, and with the left he struck the leather-covered metal arm of his chair quite a blow, most probably suggesting exuberance and/or amusement. ‘I love the idea of very ordinary supermarket carrier bags carrying more than ten grand each in tens, twenties and fifties, don’t you – all fifties naturally double-checked as kosher?’

  ‘So where is it?’ Dean said.

  ‘Extremely ready,’ Hodge said.

  ‘Fucking get it then. Or do you want me to?’ Dean said.

  ‘But you’re going into the country and will have to park the car in an unfamiliar setting for the day during Society proceedings,’ Hodge said. ‘Secure? It won’t be like Whitsun Festival estate there – people familiar with your vehicle, Aid, and therefore giving it full, proper homage, plus everything aboard. Crime always up pre-Christmas even out in the sticks, as people think of present-buying and booze and cashew nut and crackers stocks. Shall I hold on to the money for a more convenient time? No trouble. I don’t mind the risk of having it on the premises.’

  ‘We noticed,’ Dean said.

  ‘Obviously, you can’t bank that much cash in a lump,’ Hodge said. ‘The laundering alarm bells would sound off.’

  ‘Our worry, not yours,’ Dean said.

  ‘Gordon, who particularly of our people was thinking of reprisals against Dione and Bale?’ Pellotte said.

  ‘I don’t want you to fret about that, Adrian,’ Hodge said. ‘They’ll listen to me. Have listened to me, so far.’

  ‘Who?’ Pellotte said.

/>   ‘Because basically they know I’m right,’ Hodge replied. ‘Beneath all the rage, they suspect their position on Dione-Bale is bigoted, harsh and obsolete. Farcically obsolete and bigoted. Or, at least, they know I won’t shift from my stance, and that they’ll have me as an enemy if they continue with plans of that negative, vicious sort against Dione or you, Adrian, or you, Dean, or Bale. That threat, implied threat, is enough in many cases.’

  ‘We’ll take the money,’ Dean said, finishing his barley water without a tremor. ‘It will be fine in the boot.’

  ‘If you think so,’ Hodge said, and looked at Pellotte.

  ‘Yes,’ Pellotte said.

  Hodge left them. At once, Dean went to the opposite side of the room from Pellotte, so that if Hodge came back blazing he’d have to deal with counter-fire from two very separate directions. Dean had his hand in his jacket pocket. Pellotte thought this looked a bit low-level Hollywood and kept both hands in his lap. Hodge soon returned with two bulging Asda carrier bags. Dean moved forward and took them at once. Of course, Pellotte wondered whether, if they hadn’t called today, Hodge would have ferried that loot down to Cheltenham with him when he drove his daughters, Maisy and Delphine, to school for the new term after Christmas, and used it as part of due fees. Probably the bursar would be used to payments in cash because so many parents who could afford boarding for the kids had incomes from dodgy sources. Logo of the bursar guild: ‘Don’t tell me where it came from.’ Deprived of those funds, would Hodge have to withdraw the girls and put them into state education? This thought gave Pellotte true distress. Sympathy, gripping him tight, caused him momentarily to hyperventilate.

  And things might be even worse than this for the Hodges. Handing over that Asda-bag money to Pellotte and Dean was only a short-term solution. What if, on reflection, Pellotte, advised by Dean, decided Hodge could not after all be forgiven for trying to pull such a scam and had to be properly dealt with, mainly as a warning to others? Pellotte feared that perhaps he would feel compelled, duty-bound, to take an all-out reprisal against Hodgy. How would those girls get on if they had no father, or only a father too badly knocked about to work and earn for at least ten years? Hodge’s career depended very much on his smile, yet a time might arrive when smiling became permanently difficult, even impossible. Although Pellotte subsidized Gladstone Naunton’s relict, Bert Jutland Marsh, this seemed a different kind of situation from possible poverty in the Hodge household. Hodge had wilfully cheated, calculatedly risked discovery and retaliation. Some might argue he had it coming. And what did the sod mean by continually mentioning the murder of Tasker and its aftermath? But Pellotte decided to remember Maisy and Delphine in a positive, financial sense should Hodge suddenly become a non-breadwinner.

  ‘You’ll keep me in the picture, Gordon?’ Pellotte said.

  ‘About any potential insurgency over the Dione/Bale question? Oh, yes. It’s a privilege, Adrian.’

  Dean said he wanted to use the lavatory before they left, customary with him, even when he had not been drinking barley water. Pellotte knew what Dean intended. If there was nobody about, he’d take his shoes off for silence and do a rapid tour of the house, while supposedly behind the locked loo door. Then he’d return to the lavatory, re-shoe and get the flush going, so it would seem as if he’d been inside there non-stop. He’d assess from items in other rooms whether Hodge had been spending big, possibly cornering from takings much more than the twenty-one, or supposed twenty-three, that caused this visit. People could be stupid with money – showy and careless. Dean loved collecting insights and expanding his dossiers. This was the sort of skill that Pellotte found remarkable and praiseworthy in Dean, for someone whose father, so he said, had played a pub piano and done nothing much besides. Dean would have an eye open for the Sokolovsky, too, though that did not seem a danger now.

  Obviously, the way Hodge had graciously upped the figure to twenty-three was one of the most ancient tricks in the game: you hung on to filched money for at least weeks hoping nobody would notice, but, if they did, you added a bit, to show how stupendously deep-down honest you were, despite the apparent silly, pardonable reckoning glitch. And the carrier bags, all prepared: a lovely, homey, workaday touch. Hodgy almost deserved to get away with it, the pilfering sod, especially if he’d really been doing something among the crew to ease the Dione-Rupe situation, and quell that Tasker slaughter gossip. Dean could check fairly soon on this, but to Pellotte it sounded like make-believe, of course.

  He recognized that Hodge was probably right about the danger to the money if left all day in the parked BMW boot, and was definitely right about the lunacy of banking such a flagrant heap in the bank’s deposit wall safe. Pellotte thought Dean would spot these difficulties, too. When they left Hodge, Dean did, though, put the carrier bags into the boot, alongside their emergency kit, in the event blessedly unused. Pellotte couldn’t tell whether Hodge saw these extras and deduced what they meant, might have meant, might yet mean. He shook hands intensely with the two, wished them an enjoyable conference, showing another excellent replica of total genuineness. He stood at the door until the car moved off. Then he smiled that smile and waved.

  Pellotte knew Dean must regard his rooms survey as rushed, skimped, hardly professional, yet Dean seemed to feel he’d got an adequate picture. ‘Nothing outlandish in the rest of the place, Adrian,’ he said. ‘Some jewellery boxed on a dressing table, all run-of-the-mill or crap standard. The rings and watch he’s wearing are worth a bit, but less than a grand all together.’ Normally, Dean would have wanted to count the bank notes at once. He believed in counting and exactitudes. He lived by confirmed data. He always behaved as if Adrian could be a little slack over detail and needed Dean’s thorough, meticulous input. Today, though, because of his scheduled talk on Powell’s book at Faunt Castle, Dean clearly did not want any more delays. Or no more avoidable delays.

  Dean drove around the corner into Pine Street and, in fact, stopped briefly. They brought both carrier bags from the boot and quickly began to load their pockets, including trousers, with as much of the cash as would not grotesquely distort their clothes, concentrating on the biggest denominations, fifties and twenties. During his many years as a trader, Pellotte had grown very familiar with old notes in bulk. They were the essentials of his career, as was, say, a scalpel for a surgeon or a cow for a vet. Normally, he and Dean would have a briefcase for money they collected, but he knew the science of pocket utilization, also, from his earliest days dealing. The amounts collected then would not really have justified a bag of any kind, although reasonably substantial. He recalled that, for optimum storage, currency notes should be placed horizontally in jacket side-pockets but vertically in trousers. Although the inner breast pocket of the jacket could also take some notes vertically, the quantity had to be limited or a crude bump in the tailoring showed.

  They made the transfers quickly now. Although people in Pine might observe through their windows Dean and Pellotte working with the money, Pellotte guessed it would not strike them as unusual. They’d know the car, and also know it did a lot of collecting around Whitsun, a lot of in-cash collecting. And nobody would ring the police. People on Whitsun did ring the police about some troubles and nuisances, but not about Adrian Pellotte garnering money. For them, that’s who Adrian Pellotte was, most probably – someone who garnered.

  Dean had brought rubber bands for the funds. Neatness he always aimed for. The rubber bands helped. But their pockets could only take about half. Some of the notes they decided to replace in the boot with their Brownings, under some old newspapers in a green plastic crate. They had to accept that degree of risk, or make their garments farcically untrim, like Marlborough Man.

  As a keynote speaker at Faunt Castle, Dean, in particular, knew he should maintain high suavity. There’d be some very distinguished tailoring at the conference and it would be sad if he appeared unkempt through gross boodle wads distorting his couture. On account of the setting and expected upper-crust flavou
r of the conference, he had only two of his shirt buttons open today, rather than the usual three. Dean estimated this would be just right: a bohemian element tinged parts of Powell’s work, and Dean could be seen as matching that, but in a muted, very unmedallioned way. Adrian wanted to accommodate some notes in the top pocket of his jacket, although they had decided at first not to use this one in either of their suits because, unless folded into a real, pronounced, tit-like wodge, cash would protrude a little above the upper edge and look brash and vulgar, as if deliberately to proclaim they had plenty. Dean thought that might be suitable for a gathering of bookies or soccer agents but off-key for an Anthony Powell gathering. Dean recognized this as the kind of casualness Adrian could fall into, and saw he must apply a gentle corrective. He convinced Pellotte it would be better from the point of view of image to leave all the surplus in the boot under the papers with the guns.

  In fact, Adrian Pellotte thought Dean looked pretty nearly all right when he gave his lecture. Of course, Pellotte knew about the money ballasted aboard and could see that Dean’s jacket had become slightly misshapen and too tight, despite their care. But others would probably not notice and, in any case, might assume he always fell short of total smartness, and forgive him, regarding scruffiness as natural to some scholars, self-taught or otherwise. Tomorrow, though, when Pellotte and Dean returned to the two-day conference, the money would have been left in the firm’s safe and some delegates might spot how Dean’s turnout had improved and his weight apparently gone down. That wouldn’t matter. They’d think he had on a better cut suit. And similarly for Pellotte, except that he wouldn’t be doing anything as noticeable as Dean at the lectern today, and so his tailoring shouldn’t get focused on.

  Faunt Castle was still impressive, although turned over these days to community projects. Pellotte loved ramparts and towers, that kind of thing. Of course, he could have bought Faunt Castle if tempted and restored it to a home, while keeping all ancient features. But that would be a stupidly flashy use of wealth. He would stay on Whit. For these two days, however, he’d enjoy Faunt and its genuine stone and beams. He considered Dean’s talk this morning in a long mahogany-panelled room went damn well. He had done quite a bit of research – to be expected of someone so systematic when he approached a challenge, whether literary or commercial. He focused on the Lady Widmerpool character mentioned in the title of his paper, a beautiful, destructive, evil-tempered, grande horizontale, in and out of innumerable beds and several Dance volumes. At the end of one volume she is almost certainly fucking a current Eton pupil called Calthorpe on school premises at tea time, having during her life tried – not very satisfactorily – fucking at least two Old Etonians, including, of course, as Dean suggested, her husband, Lord Widmerpool. He waited miserably outside in the street for her to finish with the boy, who was related to two previous Calthorpes, actually school contemporaries of Lord Widmerpool, but then only Kenneth Widmerpool. Dean’s talk was about the splendidly circular shape of Dance, here exemplified in educationally networked upper-crust shags across the years.