by Declan Burke
Frank
Frank, tapping gently on the distressed pine of the walk-in wardrobe, found himself wondering if maybe life wouldn’t be simpler if he was gay, didn’t have to handle women all the time.
‘You’re going to have to talk to me, Gen. You’ll have to come out of there sometime. Gen?’
All afternoon she’d been in there. Frank had panicked half-an-hour into the siege, trying to remember if the walk-in had a window through which she might have escaped. So he’d charged downstairs and out into the garden; no window. Then, thinking she might have bolted while he was away from his post, he’d charged back up the stairs again. All of which was as much intensive exercise as Frank had voluntarily taken in about three years. His heart was still pounding, sweat prickling up in his confined regions.
Plus he was wondering how she was getting by without a pee, Frank concerned for his new Italian loafers.
‘Gen? At least let me explain. Allow me that much, babes.’
The first time he’d tried, she’d screamed and punched him flush on the nose, catching him off-guard so he toppled backwards across the sun-lounger. By the time Frank got his bearings again, she’d already barricaded herself into the wardrobe.
‘This is just ridiculous, Gen. We’re going to, at some point ––’
‘You’re going to jail, Frank.’ Her voice came muffled. ‘Prison.’
‘Hon,’ he crooned, getting down on his knees to paw at the distressed pine, ‘no one’s going to prison. Okay?’
‘You are. I’ll testify.’
‘You can’t.’ Frank had checked it out. ‘A wife can’t testify against her husband.’
‘Christ, Frank – we’re not even engaged.’
‘You’re common-law. It’s the same thing. I mean, in court.’
‘Horseshit, Frank. Complete fucking horseshit.’
‘If you’ll just open the door and let me explain…. It’s foolproof, Gen.’ He heard a muffled snort. ‘No, seriously – these guys are professionals. They know what they’re doing. No way are they fucking up a half-million deal.’
Frank, still pawing at the door, fell forward when Gen jerked it open. She looked down at him, surprised. ‘What the fuck’re you doing down there? Praying?’
She was dressed in a beige jogging suit, brown piping down the seams. Frank struggled to his feet and reached out for her. Gen held up a warning forefinger.
‘I swear, Frank – touch me once and I call the cops.’
She pointed to the far corner of the room. Frank backed away until he felt the bed at the back of his knees, then sat down heavily on the rumpled duvet. Gen tossed her hair back, head tilted, the better to peer down her nose. Frank understood a little of what it might be like to be a specimen in a petri dish.
‘Now,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘What’s all this about half a million?’
Ray
Crossing town in the Transit, late evening, the traffic light, Karen – quiet until now – said: ‘Bad news.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I got a call from Madge. Looks like we’re off on holiday.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope. Cruising the Greek islands, her treat. We’re supposed to be, I think, Thelma and Louise. Except with added deckchairs.’
‘And this is happening …?’
‘We fly into Athens on Thursday night.’
‘Fuck.’
‘So that’s it, right? It’s all off.’
Ray lit a cigarette, trying to work out Karen’s tone. Did she sound hopeful, but wanting Ray to make the decision for them? Or sad-but-glad, relieved the choice had already been made for them? Ray wondering, not for the first time, where’s she coming from? Where’s she going?
‘I told you, Karen. It’s off if you want it to be off.’
‘Yeah.’ Silence. ‘See, Ray – I don’t think that’s fair.’
‘I hear you. But that’s how it is. I mean, I’m game. Terry’s game. Frank’s putting up the cash. So you can spike it, sure, but this late in the proceedings, you’re the only one who can.’
‘Except for Madge.’
‘Yeah, she can spike it too. But you’re saying you think she’ll play along.’
‘What I said was, if it was me, I’d probably play along. But I’m not Madge.’
Ray nodded. Karen said: ‘I’m the one has to look her in the eye, Ray, telling her the news. And by the way, thanks for making the effort. I mean, we’re only going to Oakwood, trying to impress Madge.’
Ray glanced down at his t-shirt, the Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks. He indicated and turned onto Larkhill Road. ‘You want to go to Plan B?’ he said.
‘There’s a Plan B now?’
‘Always.’
‘Good. Because I have a Plan C.’
‘Go on.’
‘What I’m wondering,’ Karen said after a moment or two, ‘is if it’d work if we let Madge go off on her cruise but we still sting Frank. Like, we’d be away for a fortnight. How long do these things usually take?’
‘It varies. A job takes as long as it takes. But, on the cruise idea, I don’t know. You’re going to need Madge around for if they want to talk to her, make sure she’s unharmed. They usually do.’ He gave it a half-beat, then: ‘You think she’s going to freak, don’t you?’
‘Freaking’s not exactly encouraged out at Oakwood.’
‘But if she does?’
‘She mightn’t. Not if we say it the right way.’
‘What way is that?’
‘How she’s helping to screw Frank for half a million. Only let’s not get into it straight away.’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Let her meet you first, get to know you. Maybe roll her a joint and shoot the breeze a while. Chill her out.’
‘I get it.’
‘It’s the next left, then – shit, who am I telling?’
Ray turned off, the paint pots clanking in the rear. Karen said: ‘You’re not worried? I mean, about telling Madge what you do?’
Ray shrugged.
‘I get it,’ Karen said. ‘You want to meet her first, see if she’s the kind that’s likely to freak.’
He shrugged again. ‘If she doesn’t want to do it,’ he said, ‘we don’t do it. If she does, we do. Either way, that’s me done. Stick a fork in my ass.’
‘That cute ass?’
Ray grinned. Karen said: ‘You’re really done?’
‘Yep.’
‘But if it’s so easy ––’
‘I never said it was easy. I said we never got caught.’
‘But how come now?’
‘I told you. The new shylock. I don’t trust the guy.’
‘And that’s all it is?’
Wanting more than logic, pushing it now, not letting it go. Ray’d be the first to say he knew jack-shit about women, but even Ray knew enough to appreciate that Karen wouldn’t have let the moment build up to where it was if she didn’t have an inkling as to how Ray was thinking, maybe even feeling the same herself.
Problem was, Ray was too sure how he was feeling. What it felt like, when Karen was around, was tingly and soft, like being electrocuted by cotton wool. Except Ray didn’t know how to make that sound the way a woman might like it to sound.
He pulled in opposite Madge’s place. ‘Answer me this,’ he said. ‘How come women always have to be asking big questions all the time?’
Karen, opening the door, getting out, said: ‘You wouldn’t know this, Ray. But when a girl’s out with a guy? Mostly she needs to make her own fun.’
Madge
‘Pull in,’ Madge said.
Ray indicated, parked up in the slow lane, set his hazard lights flashing. Madge looked at him long and hard, then twisted to look at Karen in the rear of the van, Karen perched on a big paint pot.
‘So just to clarify,’ Madge said. ‘You’re abducting me.’
‘Not right now,’ Karen said. ‘And not me, exactly. Ray’ll be looking after the actual logistics.’
<
br /> ‘Logistics?’
‘Picking you up, showing you where you’ll be staying. That kind of thing.’
‘Look, Madge,’ Ray said, ‘it was Karen’s idea to tell you. It was just me, I’d have gone ahead and done the snatch. So if you have problems with the concept, blame me. Karen’s just trying to make it easy on you.’
‘The concept?’
‘All you have to do is say no,’ Ray confirmed. ‘Being honest? I’d rather you said no. Seriously.’
‘That’s sweet, Ray. Really it is. Makes all the difference. My ex-husband wants me kidnapped and my best friend’s helping out, but you’d rather I said no. Now I’m all happy again.’
‘This isn’t us, Madge,’ Karen said. ‘It’s Frank. And if we don’t do it, he’ll get someone else. Or maybe have the twins snatched.’
Madge had a toke, considering. ‘Could that be arranged? Ray? You feel like working a little freelance?’
‘I know it’s a bit of a shock, Madge,’ Karen said, ‘but ––’
‘Shock? Christ, I knew he was a lousy bastard, but kidnap?’
‘No one gets hurt,’ Ray said. ‘No one ever gets hurt.’
‘You think?’ Madge was outraged. ‘Try this, Ray. I’m fifty-one years old, I have a husband who wants me kidnapped and two kids who’d care less if I wound up a whore in a Karachi slum. How much hurt do you want, exactly?’
‘See,’ Karen said, ‘this is what we were thinking. About turning it around. Hurting Frank.’
Madge heard herself again: I want Frank to die. ‘Hurt him how?’
‘With hammers and shit,’ Karen said. ‘Like in Misery.’
‘I told you,’ Ray said. ‘No one gets hurt. Not on my watch. That’s a good way to go about pulling hard time.’
‘Okay,’ Karen conceded. ‘Then how about we just rip him off for the half million and turn him over to Terry, tell Terry that Frank was trying to scam us all?’
‘What’s to stop Frank going to the cops?’ Madge heard herself say.
‘He’d incriminate himself,’ Ray said. ‘Intent to defraud, the works.’
‘Neat,’ Madge said. ‘Very tidy.’ She handed Ray the joint. ‘Ray? Mind if Karen and I get a little space here?’
‘Sure thing.’
Ray got out and strolled away up the hard shoulder, the tip of the joint glowing orange in the headlights. Karen said: ‘Madge ––’
‘Hold up, Kar. There’s something we need to be clear on.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The date-rape thing? That was Frank.’
‘Frank?’
‘He was already at college, three years in. No way he could’ve finished out, not back then, with some bastard running around at home. So my father did him a deal. We hand up the baby, and then Frank swings around again when he’s qualified, marries me.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Pretty much. I mean, Kar – they signed a fucking agreement. I’m in the middle with no say, I’m a piece of fucking meat.’
‘The bastards.’
‘Yeah, well. That was then. This is now.’
‘You’re going to run with it?’
‘Only if Frank gets hurt.’
‘How hurt?’
‘Let’s not tie ourselves down,’ Madge said, leaning across to flash the headlights at Ray, ‘to specifics.’
Frank
‘You just missed the off-ramp, Frank.’
‘Fuck.’
Frank wouldn’t have minded so much but they were travelling south on the by-pass at the time. So he had to wait ten minutes before another exit came up, then another twenty to get all the way around and back on the road out to Oakwood.
‘You think next time,’ he said, gritting his teeth, ‘you could let me know before we pass the exit?’
Gen just exhaled and turned up the stereo – Christ, some Bobbie Williams moron, sounded to Frank like a bomb gone off in hell’s cutlery drawer. Frank was in the mood for a little Rossini, something smooth and full to take the edge off. Except Gen had listened to about three minutes of The Barber of Seville and then frisbee’d the CD out the window.
Rossini in the gutter: a metaphor, Frank thought bitterly, for my world.
Frank hadn’t even wanted to go out, had things to think about. Like for say Gen cutting herself in for exactly half the swag, telling Frank it’d be a good idea to lock up any whistles he had lying around the house in case she felt like blowing a few. Frank had agreed fast, except now he was wondering if he hadn’t set himself up for a double-cross, giving Gen all she needed to leech him dry if she ever got around to considering blackmail.
Then that started him wondering, shit, if maybe the pros, the kidnappers, mightn’t try to run the bounce on Frank too. Maybe it was just Frank, but it made perfect sense to him that criminal types would pass up a one-off percentage deal for a lucrative, never-ending sting.
‘But we have to go out,’ Gen had insisted. ‘Tonight of all nights.’
‘I’m not feeling so good,’ Frank’d mumbled, quailing at the prospect of the inevitable jibes, the cracks about his golf, Doug still tubed up in ICU.
‘Tough titty, Frank. Because everything has to look normal. First thing the cops’ll look for, if they drop around asking questions, is anything out of the ordinary. A change in pattern, your routine, that kind of thing. And we always go out on Sunday nights.’ She’d finished her martini in one long draught, patted back a tiny burp. ‘More to the point, if you don’t turn up tonight, you’re as good as admitting liability for busting Doug’s skull.’
Frank, while accepting the logic, had caught himself wondering while getting dressed how come Gen was such an expert on what cops might or mightn’t do when they turned up to ask questions….
It started early, while they were still crossing the foyer towards the Members’ Bar. Grimes, this spongy excuse for a speckled turd, buttoning up coming out of the Gents, saw Frank and grinned, then scuttled across the foyer to intersect with their path, wiping his damp hand on his ass. An air-kiss for Gen, a furtive fondle of her hand; then: ‘How goes it, Frank?’
‘Fine, Grimes. And you?’
‘Great, great. I hear Doug’s on the mend.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. They have him on horse tranquilisers now.’
Gen rose to the bait. ‘Horse tranks?’
‘Apparently,’ Grimes gurgled, ‘it’s to keep him in a stableford condition. Geddit? A stableford condition.’
‘Hilarious,’ Frank fumed, gripping Gen by the elbow, pushing on through the double doors of the Members’ Bar. A warm wave of unsweetened sweat washed over them, and it was only then that Frank began to understand how hellish his evening was going to be. Because Madge was holding court at the bar, gin in hand, resplendent in a slinky green dress of some kind of shimmering material….
And oh Christ, no – who the fuck let Karen in?
Rossi
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Rossi said. ‘This soft time you want to do?’
‘What about it?’
‘You’ve what they call put it all into perspective.’
‘No shit.’
‘No shit. I mean, what are we at, Sleeps? Really, what are we at?’
They were parked up on Larkhill Mews, diagonally across from Margaret Dolan’s place, the Crossfire in the driveway, nobody home. Sleeps said as much.
‘Okay,’ Rossi said patiently. ‘But I’m talking about the big picture. You see what I’m saying.’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Look around you, man. The fucking houses, the cars….’
‘That Crossfire’s a tasty motor,’ Sleeps agreed.
‘Meanwhile we’re sitting in this piece-a-crap.’
A ’92 Corolla Sleeps had boosted earlier on.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers, Rossi.’
‘This is my point. How come we’re beggars?’
‘Because we are.’
‘Okay. But try this – maybe we’re beggars because we’re the
only ones who don’t look the part. I mean, legit.’
Sleeps considered that as he sucked some tangerine Slurpy Joe through a straw. ‘Maybe,’ he conceded. ‘So what?’
‘Couple a days back I was in this charity shop,’ Rossi began. ‘Where I got the threads.’
‘This wouldn’t happen to be,’ Sleeps said cautiously, ‘the charity shop that got knocked over?’
‘Same one.’
‘No way, Rossi.’
‘No way what?’
‘No way am I taking the rap for blagging a charity shop. It’d be like going down for touching up little girls.’
‘Perxactly,’ Rossi said. ‘Everyone, don’t ask me why, but when it’s charity? They want to believe it’s all above board. I mean, it’s like they’re kids. Walk into a charity shop and it’s like a magic fucking bubble, no one ever got screwed in a charity shop.’
‘It’d be bad form,’ Sleeps agreed.
‘Wait for it,’ Rossi said. ‘Now the thing with charity shops is, no one’d be seen dead in one of those holes unless everyone knew they didn’t need to be there in the first place. I mean, have you ever bought anything in Oxfam?’
‘Not fucking likely.’
‘See, it’s the folks that live up here,’ Rossi said, nodding out at the Sycamore-lined street. ‘They’ll drop in, buy some shit, take it home.’
‘Easing their conscience.’
‘Then, next fucking week, they’ll drop it off on some other fucking charity.’
‘So it’s the same shit,’ Sleeps said, starting to see it, ‘doing the rounds all the time.’
‘Perfuckingxactly.’
‘And you want to….’
‘Buy a load of scabby shirts, get stocked up, open the doors.’
‘Except,’ Sleeps said, ‘in a case like this, it’s the punters who bring you the stock.’
‘You’re seeing it?’
‘Fucking A I’m seeing it, man.’
‘Sleeps?’ Rossi said, feeling choked up. ‘I want to tell you, what you said this morning, about taking my rap – that’s the noblest fucking thing I ever fucking heard. And I’m hear to tell you right now, that I want you to be president of the Francis Assisi Rehabilitation Concern Organisation.’