The Big O (A Screwball Noir)

by Declan Burke

‘Doubt it. And even if she did, she’d have rang to say. She wouldn’t just scoot off.’

  ‘You tried to ring her?’

  ‘I must’ve left three, four messages. The twins have been trying to get her too.’

  ‘And you’re saying Frank doesn’t know where she is.’

  ‘He asked if I knew where she was. But that could mean anything. He could be trying something sneaky.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ray said, ‘but I’m Frank’s sneaky. I mean, if someone was going to snatch Madge for Frank, it’d be me. I’m his guy.’

  Karen sipped her latte. ‘You don’t think,’ she said slowly, ‘that whoever got your message on Frank’s phone, that it’s them?’

  ‘No chance. First they’d have to know who Madge was and where she lived. And that’s presuming, and it’s a pretty big presumption, that they’d have the balls to snatch someone. I mean, muggers? And even if they were the kind, they’d have to be lunatics to do it without knowing whose score they were fucking with.’

  Karen lit one of Frank’s Marlboros. ‘And there was no sign at the house of, y’know, a struggle?’

  ‘Apart from the puke, everything looked okay.’

  ‘The puke’s a big thing, Ray. Madge wouldn’t just walk away from a puddle of puke. She’d clean it up.’

  ‘So you’re saying she left in a hurry.’

  ‘Against her will, Ray.’

  Ray filched one of Frank’s smokes. ‘What are the odds,’ he said, exhaling, ‘that she went shopping or something. Y’know, she was going to be away for a few days, maybe she thought ––’

  ‘Don’t be such a patronising fuck. You think it’s all women think about, how they look? Jesus.’ Then it hit her. ‘Hey, take me back to the house again. You’re saying nothing looked out of place, right?’

  ‘It looked fine to me.’

  ‘Yeah, but … There was nothing there that shouldn’t have been there. Apart from the puke.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘In the hallway, or maybe the bedroom – you didn’t see Madge’s bag? I mean, she’d have packed a bag. You told her to.’

  Ray thought hard, squinting past Karen as he tried to remember. ‘There was nothing left out, no. Unless she had it stashed under the bed or something.’

  ‘She’d have had it ready to go.’ Karen stubbed her smoke, grabbed her mobile. ‘We need to ring her,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you already rang her?’

  ‘The land-line, yeah.’

  ‘You didn’t try her mobile?’ Ray sounding incredulous.

  ‘Madge doesn’t like mobiles, Ray. She only ever turns it on for emergencies.’

  Ray, sounding miffed now, said: ‘So you’re saying, hanging out with me for a few days – that constitutes an emergency?’

  Karen, listening to the brr-brr, glared. ‘This’d be a bad time to start getting sensitive, Ray.’

  Doyle

  Doyle had been fuming, fantasising about how to nail Frank for wasting police time. So she didn’t make the jump until the kid said: ‘I mean, like, how long do we wait before ringing her in as a missing person?’

  ‘Woah. Who’s missing?’

  ‘Moms.’ The whiney voice ground down on Doyle’s nerves. ‘We’ve already tried ringing her friends, not that she has many … Anyway, no one knows where she is.’

  ‘Maybe she went for a walk.’

  ‘Moms? I don’t think so. At least, nothing longer than a stroll to the drinks cabinet.’

  ‘Could she have a friend – I mean, a gentleman friend – that you don’t know about?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? Although,’ the kid said thoughtfully, ‘now you mention it, one of her friends, Fiona, said she saw Moms out last night at the golf club. She was with people, a girl called Karen and this guy Fiona says is a painter-decorator.’

  Doyle felt the lucky-break shivers. ‘You got a description?’

  ‘Sure. She’s about fifty, has a ––’

  ‘Not your mother. The painter guy. What’d he look like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Okay. Give me this Fiona’s number. And sit tight, I’ll call back. If you hear from her, call me.’

  Two minutes with Fiona got Doyle all the description she needed – serious fringe, cute buns. She took the address and was turning into Larkhill Mews when the Transit swept out by her, Ray on the phone. Doyle had ducked down, pulled in, thought it over fast – training said check the house, instinct said follow Ray. She’d u-turned, peeled rubber.

  Now, sitting across the street from the coffee dock, watching Ray through the big window, the girl – Karen, Doyle was guessing – making a call, Doyle started working it through. Ray was pulling a snatch, this much he’d already told her. Except it looked like his intended target, this Margaret Dolan, had gone AWOL – and wherever she was, she wasn’t in the Transit parked up the street, Doyle’d already had a sneaky peek inside.

  Meanwhile, Margaret Dolan was the ex-wife of Doctor Frank Dolan, who was reluctant to help the police with their enquiries on an apparently unrelated matter. And according to Fiona, the Karen who’d been with Margaret Dolan out at Oakwood was the doctor’s receptionist.

  Doyle gnawed her lower lip. Ray hanging out with the slicer’s receptionist, both of them sweating it up – Doyle could tell that much even from across the street. Then you had the plastic surgeon getting mugged, but none too worried about losing his briefcase, this just before his wife goes missing. Doyle still wondering in the back of her mind about the Nervocaine, how maybe the doc was peddling pills to socialites worried about how liposuction might leave scars. The receptionist, Karen, talking now on the phone, getting agitated, stabbing the air with the forefinger of her free hand….

  Karen? Nervocaine?

  Something clicked. Doyle, still watching the coffee dock, went with her instincts again, rang Sparks.

  ‘Hey,’ Sparks said, ‘you missed a great fucking night Saturday night. Wait’ll you hear who ––’

  ‘Later, Sparks. I need a quick favour.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Can you run down to my office and dig out the file on Rossi Callaghan?’

  ‘Sure thing. Hold on.’ Doyle watched Karen jab the air some more, the phone conversation getting heated; hearing spasms of conversation on her own phone as Sparks moved through the station. Then Sparks said: ‘Okay, I got it.’

  ‘Flick through to known associates. Any Karens in there?’

  A pause. Then: ‘Yep. Karen King. Callaghan was living with her before he went away the third time.’

  Another click – Karen King, the name Doyle had rung the night Rossi Callaghan terrorised the fiancé-screwing Marsha. The Karen King who’d never rung back.

  ‘She have any previous?’ Doyle said. ‘Specifically, I’m looking for black market scripts.’

  ‘Doesn’t say anything here, no.’

  ‘Okay. Run a check on her, buzz me back if there’s anything.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘Thanks, Sparks. That’s another one.’

  ‘I’m counting ’em.’

  Doyle hung up, trying to decide if it was too early to call it in. Or, already, too late.

  Rossi

  Rossi fumbled through Margaret’s travel bag and finally found the phone, down at the bottom, under the green skimpies. He checked the caller ID – Karen-Karen-Karen – and realised it was all going to be easier than he’d even dared hope.

  ‘Hey, Karen. How’s tricks?’

  He heard the sharp intake of breath, relished it. Then: ‘Rossi?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  For once in his life Rossi was on a roll. Being chauffeured around in a Merc, Sleeps’ latest boost, and the Germans, give them their due, they built to last, paying particular attention to things like seats, suspension, comfort. Rossi hadn’t had a jab in his shaft in what felt like forever.

  Then, also on the plus side, was the way Margaret was behaving herself, not freaking out the way Rossi�
�d expected. He’d gagged her with a tea-towel strip after force-feeding her three Nervocaine, but it wasn’t just the pills. The way she looked at him, wide-eyed, with as much awe as fear – it put Rossi in mind of the way Kay had looked at Michael at the end of The Godfather, realising what he could do, what he’d done. Rossi believed he could get used to being looked at like that.

  Then, the piece-the-resistance – Rossi recognising, as soon as Margaret said Ray’s name, the drawl he’d heard on the answering machine: the freak with the fringe, Karen’s new guy. Rossi couldn’t believe how it was all coming together. Like, you start out wanting your .44 back, the Ducati, the stash, and the next thing you know you’re riding around in a Merc with half a million in the post. The half million.

  Strictly speaking, of course, Rossi wouldn’t be needing the stash now, not with the half million coming through. All the same, he’d told Sleeps, there was still a principle involved. You start off letting small things like that slip, next thing you know, everyone’s taking liberties. Besides, Rossi wasn’t touching down in Sicily with any piece-a-crap lady-gun .22. A popgun like that might be enough to frighten the likes of Margaret Dolan from Larkhill Mews but any decent crew, a proper family, they’d laugh Rossi back onto the plane if he pulled a .22.

  ‘Where are you, Rossi?’

  ‘Right now I’m just driving around. Sleeps reckons the cops have this thing they call triangulation, it can pick up a phone signal and nail it down to one spot. He says they use helicopters, the works, he saw it in a movie. Except if we keep moving, they’re fucked. Why – where are you?’

  ‘Where’s Madge?’

  ‘On the back seat.’

  ‘Let me talk to her.’

  ‘What’s that, an order or some shit?’

  ‘Rossi, I swear, if you lay one fucking finger ––’

  ‘You’re threatening me?’

  ‘You skinny fucking prick! I’ll cut your fucking ––’

  Rossi, grinning, held the phone away from his ear so Sleeps could get in on the action. Sleeps nodded, bored already, kept his eyes on the road. Rossi shrugged, went back to listening.

  ‘ … and feed it to Anna!’

  ‘Yeah. Listen, Karen – don’t get me wrong, it’s been nice talking to you. But I’m thinking you’re a little too worked up to discuss details. So when you’re ready to chat nicely, ring me back, we can work out where you’re going to drop off this half million Ray’s getting from Frank.’

  He hung up and switched off the phone. Winked at Sleeps, then glanced into the rear seat. Margaret lay bent at an angle, hands behind her back, the tea-towel strip wound around the lower half of her head.

  ‘Sounds to me,’ he said, ‘like Karen’s pretty worried about you. So this should be over in no time at all.’

  No response; just the wide-eyed stare. Rossi caught a flash of the green skimpies and cursed his luck, his dangling gear still out of sorts – Margaret, okay, was pushing fifty, but she was curvy all the way round and Rossi still hadn’t had a jump since he’d got out.

  Maybe, he thought, turning around to face forward, just maybe, later on, he might even be in a position to give her some more reasons to look at him wide-eyed. Yeah, the way Kay had looked at Michael.

  Frank

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ the nurse behind the desk said, ‘if I should allow you in. I mean, Mr Jennings is in a coma.’

  ‘I understand,’ Frank said. ‘But I’m his doctor.’

  The nurse, squat and frumpy, her arms akimbo, nodded. ‘That’s what I’m talking about. Like, what good can you do him? He’s already getting specialist care.’

  ‘As it happens,’ Frank said, back-pedalling furiously, ‘I’m actually here as his friend rather than his doctor. We golf together.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Were you there when he got beaned with the ball?’

  ‘I, ah, no. I couldn’t make it that day. Emergency call-out.’

  ‘Shame. Anyway, it’s family only. Sorry.’

  ‘Y’know,’ Frank wheedled, ‘maybe the sound of a friendly voice….’

  ‘Now that is a good idea. Why don’t you go away and tape yourself, I don’t know, singing some Tom Jones maybe? I’ll make sure your Mr Jennings gets to hear it.’

  Frank stared. The nurse stared right back. Frank about-turned and trudged down the long corridor, turned right into the foyer and punched the button to summon an elevator. As always, when it was Frank waiting, the elevator wouldn’t budge from the ground floor; Frank reached again and jiggled the button, feeling the insurance form crinkle in his breast pocket; stared off through the fire-exit doors, seeing but not really seeing the flat roof beyond, the parking lot, the poplars fringing the hospital grounds….

  Frank rewound fast. Trying to work out what it might have been that flashed like a glow-worm, once and faint, way back in his brain. The trees, the parking lot, the flat roof, the fire-exit doors….

  Thirty seconds later, the fire alarm squealing like buzz-saws on steel, Frank was crouched beside Doug’s bed holding a pen upright in Doug’s limp fingers and scrawling Doug’s signature in triplicate on Frank’s copy of the insurance form. It was a low act, for sure, but Frank – walking out now through the chaos in the corridor, the blaring fire alarm making it difficult for the evacuation orders to be heard – Frank was of the opinion that any insurance company not insured against bogus claims didn’t really deserve to be in the business.

  Madge

  As if things weren’t bad enough – bound and gagged, the Nervocaine wearing off, a nasty tea-towel taste in her mouth; Madge wondering how much it would’ve hurt the guy, this Rossi, to at least pick a clean fucking towel – she now needed to pee. The pee-burn turning into an actual pain.

  ‘Mmm-mmmm,’ she said. ‘Mmm-mmmf-mmmm.’

  Except the towel sucked every last drop of moisture from her mouth. And the radio was playing loud, some guy shouting about gardening, his hoe in the hood. ‘Mmmmm. MMMMM!’

  The driver, Sleeps, shouted: ‘We can’t keep driving around all night, Rossi. At some point we’re going to have to find somewhere to kip down.’

  ‘We’re not going back to your place?’

  ‘No can do. People know I went looking for you the other day with the Chopper. So if anyone starts asking about you, I mean the cops, they’ll get pointed straight to my place.’

  ‘MMMMMMFFF!’

  ‘You got any ideas?’ Rossi said.

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘MMMMMMM!’ Madge screamed, kicking the back of Rossi’s seat.

  ‘Christ! What the fuck ––’ Rossi half-turned to glare. ‘What’s your fucking beef?’

  Sleeps checked the rear-view, then indicated and pulled onto the hard shoulder, turned down the volume. ‘I’m guessing,’ he said, ‘she needs to take a wizz.’

  Madge nodded frantically.

  ‘Wouldn’t mind a pit-stop myself,’ Sleeps said. ‘Anyway, we need to fill up.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rossi said, still glaring back into the rear seat. ‘Find somewhere quiet, pull in around the back.’ Then he held up the gun for Madge to see. ‘Any funny stuff,’ he warned, ‘you try to shout or some shit when we take the towel off, I’ll blaze away. And it won’t just be you. You want that on your conscience?’

  Madge shook her head, closed her eyes and clenched every pore in her body. Ten minutes later she was squatting above a brown-streaked toilet in a one-stall washroom out back of a truck-stop. Tears of relief rolling down her cheeks, big fat balls soaked up by the tea-towel. Wondering, disgusted by her squalid surroundings, how it was possible in the circumstances to feel, ohmigod, horny? She’d heard, okay, of the Stockholm syndrome, captives falling for their captors, and she’d always fantasised about a bit of rough – but Christ, this guy? Some skanger in a pantomime clown’s suit?

  Back in the car, driving off, Madge with her hands bound to the front this time, a small concession, Sleeps said: ‘Hey Rossi, why don’t we take her down the country? Lay up somewhere quiet.’

&
nbsp; Rossi shook his head. ‘We don’t want to be too far away when Karen gets the money, give her any time to think. Seriously, Sleeps, you don’t know her. I mean, look what she did with my sixty grand.’

  ‘Mmmmmm,’ Madge said.

  ‘What the fuck is it this time?’ Rossi demanded.

  ‘Mmm-mmmm.’

  ‘I think she wants you to take off the towel again,’ Sleeps said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m thinking, if you take off the towel, you’ll find out.’

  Rossi considered that, then reached into the back. ‘If you do anything stupid,’ he said, sliding the towel down, ‘I’ll notch your nose. Both sides.’

  Madge coughed and spat.

  ‘Go on,’ Rossi said.

  ‘I know a place you can go,’ she said, ‘out of town. It’s not far.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Where?’

  ‘Three-Rock Woods. There’s an old Forestry Commission cottage, no one ever goes there.’

  ‘Except,’ Sleeps said, glancing in the rear-view, ‘maybe the occasional woodcutter, wandering by looking for a Red Riding Hood to save.’

  Madge shook her head. ‘What you’re presuming,’ she said, ‘is I want you to get caught.’

  Rossi, intrigued, scratched the tip of his nose with the .22. ‘You’re saying you don’t?’

  ‘The money?’ Madge said. ‘This half million? Guess where that’s coming from. I mean, guess who gets screwed if you walk away with it all.’

  Frank

  Frank found a parking spot and jogged around to Trust Direct so he’d be sweating, ruffled, when he asked to see Doug.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Jennings isn’t available today,’ the receptionist said. ‘Is there anyone else who might be able to help?’

  ‘There’d better be. Otherwise I’ll be getting a finger in the post.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Not half as sorry as you’ll be if my wife ends up paraplegic. Who’s in charge?’

  Twenty minutes later Frank was sitting in front of the deputy manager’s desk dunking a chocolate biscuit into a cup of hot sweet tea, Frank pleading shock, needing a sugar rush. The deputy manager, Marie, a severely streamlined brunette who’d had a rhino, Frank could tell, and some bleph, said: ‘Take me through it again, Doctor Dolan. You say you received the ransom demand this morning.’