The Great California Game l-14

by Jonathan Gash

  Her face lit, losing that waxy cast and hueing into animation. “You will? Truly, Lovejoy?”

  She came to fold herself beside me. “You know the risks?”

  “You’re worth it,” I lied, hoping Gina’s recorded tapes of this conversation would exonerate me one hundred per cent.

  Her eyes fluttered, lowered. “Don’t be under any illusion, Lovejoy. There’s a limit to what I can do.”

  “That’s always the danger.” I felt noble, a knight on a white charger. “You want me to have a word with Moira?”

  She gave a harsh laugh. “No, Lovejoy. You’ll have to end it. The Sherlock enterprise. It’s the one thing that’ll make him drop that Hawkins bitch.”

  End? That all? I cheered up. Moira’s plot hinged on a grailer scam, and they’re always failures. Dreams are dud, which is why they stay dreams and never become reality.

  “Easy, Sophie,” I said. “Leave it to me.”

  “You will? Oh, you darling man! Thank you!”

  For one second I knew I could have joined her in communal happiness, so to speak, but I heard someone coming down the corridor. My hand never even reached her breast.

  “Invite me to your place,” I said, thinking quickly. “To, what, restore your antiques.”

  She slipped me a card from her handbag.

  “I’ll okay it with Jennie,” she said. “I’ve a convincing collection; Jim Bethune supplied most. You want I should damage one or two, make it look convincing?”

  I went cold, nearly throttled her but kept control. Her hand cupped, grasped mine. She kissed my palm, eyes filling. I’d never seen so much gratitude at one go.

  “Don’t ever damage an antique, Sophie. Promise?”

  “I’ll do anything in my power for you. I swear.”

  I left then, her gratitude flowing out into the corridor after me like a cloying perfume. Mr Sokolowsky was approaching. He said a cheery hello, asked how I was liking life on board ship. I was making some sort of inane reply when he leant close confidentially.

  “Help her, Lovejoy,” he whispered, and went on his way, the sentimental old fool. I presumed he meant Sophie. I shrugged it off, only one more bemusement among many.

  When I returned, Bill had gone. The deck arena looked uninviting. Nothing so forlorn as drooping bunting. All was left for seagulls and the evening breeze.

  Onshore the Wildlife van remained. I looked down at the water. Still enough daylight to make a swim for it. A small white motor launch was purring across the bay, heading parallel to the shore. One crewman, and Bill. The Gina’s inshore boat. I yelled, “Hey, Bill!” but he didn’t turn. All right, I thought, narked. Not even the manners to say so-long.

  I decided I’d better report to Gina as soon as darkness covered the day, and went to find the galley for some nosh to keep the wolf from the door. It was on the way that I got the key to most, if not all.

  The cruiser was almost silent, rocking somnolently with its lines tapping as the breeze flicked them. The companionway led down a deck. You double back towards the stern, for the crew’s quarters. I’d been told our scoff was there and nowhere else. Tye Dee must already be there, I’d decided. Like an obedient hound I would report to Gina on the dot, allaying all her suspicions.

  “Lovejoy?”

  I almost fainted with fright when she grabbed my arm, coming out of nowhere.

  “You silly mare! You scared me to death!”

  Normally Kelly Palumba would have giggled, having put one over on the universe. She was in no state for levity. She was shaking, teeth chattering and limbs a-twitch. A fleck of vomit touched the corner of her mouth. God, she was a mess.

  “Lovejoy. Where the fuck’s Bill?”

  “How the hell should I know?” She clung and trailed, clawing. She babbled inanely. I pushed her back into her cabin and stepped after. “Look. Wait here. I’ll call Blanche.”

  “Wait?” she shrilled. “What the fuck’s with wait?” She wept, shivering. Her dress was soiled. I looked away, stuck to my fair-minded task of getting the hell out and leaving her to stew in her own pot. “Get fo’ me, Lovejoy. I’m dyin’.”

  Some sort of drugs. “I’m sorry. I haven’t got any.” I pressed the button frantically. This nightmare wasn’t the prelude I wanted to my clandestine escape. “Who’s your stewardess?”

  “Fuck the stewardess!” She slumped against the door, sobbing, muscles in spasm, retching. “Where’s Bill?” It was a cry from the heart. I tried dragging her away so I could get out. Where the hell was Blanche and her team? “Bill sees me right every time. You’re all against me…”

  Bill the drug supplier, to this ruin? I almost joined in her wailing from self-pity.

  “Let me out. I’ll get Bill. He’ll bring you your, er, tablets. Honest, love.”

  She flailed against the cabin door in some sort of epilepsy. Why had I let her lean against the damned door, trapping me like this? I reached for a towel by the bedside, scattering syringes, silver foil, and rolled it under her head. I vaguely knew there was something about an epileptic’s tongue, but what?

  Gradually she quietened. I was drenched in sweat, breathing hard.

  “They won’t even let me play the Game,” she whimpered. “Just because I’ve a small habit. Who hasn’t, Lovejoy?”

  “Mmmh,” I said. “Rotten sods.”

  She sobbed uncontrollably. “Now I’ll be out of the California Game. It happened before.” Her voice crescendoed. “They’ll not let me to LA.”

  I tried to step over her towards the door but she clutched my leg. “They wouldn’t do a thing like that. I’ll ask them —”

  “Fix me, Lovejoy.” She tried a smile. A pathetic eager grin for a horror film. “I’ll be nice for you. Ask Bill. I’ll do anything ifn you make me sing.”

  I was worn out. The cabin was insufferably hot. There must be something stupendous in drugs to reduce a complete human to this. She’d nearly been exquisite two hours since.

  “Right!” I said brightly. “I’ll get the, er, tablets for you. I have nine, maybe a dozen. Just let me pass…” All the time I was pushing the bloody button and not one of the idle bitches was coming. I’d belt the lazy cows.

  She started her retching, holding on. I got a hand on the door latch, but made it no further, frantically started knocking on the panel calling out Blanche’s name, bawling for Tye Dee, anybody for God’s sake. She hung on, weeping and stinking, babbling not to leave her like this, promising anything.

  “I’ll get you a place in the Game, Lovejoy,” she wheedled, her aghast ravaged face staring up at me. “I’ll fund you!”

  “Help!” I bawled, sick and shaking almost as bad as she was. “Blanche, for Christ’s sake —”

  The door handle turned, and Blanche came whizzing in, forcing the girl bodily up from the floor in an amazing display of strength. Tye crowded in after. I reeled out.

  “Where the hell have you been?” I yelled. “I’ve been pressing that frigging button and knocking the bloody door for six hours, while you idle gets sat on your fat arses and —”

  Tye clamped a hand over my mouth and hauled me along to the next cabin. He slammed me in and shut the door.

  “You call yourself a friend?” I was yelling. “Leaving me —”

  “Shtum, Lovejoy.” He listened. The faint thumping from the adjacent room quietened, stilled. He relaxed, sat on the bunk.

  I went to the bathroom, washed my hands and face, sniffing at my clothes for traces of Kelly… and noticed that Tye wore only trousers and a gaping shirt. He was barefoot. My hands in the basin’s warm water, I stared at my reflection. Come to think of it, Blanche had hardly been what you might call eminently presentable, either. She’d looked just rising from a good night’s, ah, rest.

  Tye was pulling on socks, fumbling for shoes beneath the bed. Silk stockings were draped on a chair. The bed linen was disordered. A hard day’s night had been had by all. I straightened, found a towel.

  “No wonder you were slow coming,” I said even
ly.

  He cocked an ear, nodded as a buzzer sounded three faint zeds. “We have to talk.”

  Blanche entered. She was pale under her dark skin, almost purple around the eyes. Lovely, but scared and looking at Tye for direction. She carried a small tray holding a syringe, needles, ampoules. They made me feel queasy.

  “I’ve fixed her good, Tye,” she said in a wobbly voice. She looked in a worse state than me. Partners in paradise, while I’d been in hell next door.

  “You’d better know something, Lovejoy,” Tye said. “All that went on in Kelly Palumba’s cabin’ll be taped, sound and video.”

  “Thank God for that!” I said vehemently. “It’ll prove she dragged me in. When Nicko and Gina see the tape they’ll see I was bawling my head off for you two…”

  Aha. I paused, looked from Blanche to Tye.

  “You see the problem, Lovejoy.”

  Blanche was finishing dressing, I tried not to see her lovely legs sheathing into her silks. Tye stood, buttoning his collar.

  “Aye.” And I did. The camera record would show me all innocent, trying to cope with the sick lass—and it would reveal that Tye and Blanche were in dereliction of duty. “You two’ll get your wrists slapped?”

  “Sort of, Lovejoy.”

  “But this…” Like a fool I glanced about the cabin, as if bugging devices would be in view and clearly labelled.

  Blanche answered, doing her hair at the mirror. “I have an arrangement with the recordist, Lovejoy. To default the circuits.”

  She evaded my eyes in the mirror. Well, she had powers of persuasion any electrician would accede to.

  Tye spoke, fastening his holster. I watched, amazed. It was the first real holster I’d ever seen. I’d no idea they were so bulky. However did undercover agents manage?

  “We can erase Kelly Palumba’s, Lovejoy.”

  Into the ensuing silence Blanche spoke softly. “If you stay quiet, Lovejoy.”

  Now her eyes met mine. It wasn’t a simple threat. It was more like, well, a country woman’s promise of coming weather, certain it would come but hoping for maximum clemency. A rainstorm, we’d all get soaked.

  “What’s the risk to me?” I was conscious I was missing some sort of opportunity, but was too feeble-minded to think it through. “I’ve promised loyalty to Gina all sorts of ways.”

  “Haven’t we all, Lovejoy?” Tye donned his jacket. He looked surprisingly neat, if a trifle bulky. So those holsters were tailored! The things you learn.

  “There’ll be no comeback from Gina,” Blanche said. “Where’s the harm in a little fun?” She did that erotic magic with lipstick that always makes me swallow and think hard unyielding thoughts. She smiled to herself. And Tye smiled too.

  “Everybody needs a little fun now and then. Right?”

  I swallowed. “Right, right.”

  That was where we left it, we of the good ship Gina, me going to change into clean gear then totter along to the galley for a nosh, Tye strolling to resume his patrol, Blanche staring at her reflection slowly sucking her lips in to even her lipstick. And the drugged girl somewhere in that chemical paradise from which few travellers ever really return.

  CHAPTER TEN

  « ^ »

  IT WAS Chanel who came to tell me I was wanted. I liked Chanel. She was personal maid to Mrs. Melodie van Cordlant, my one-cent lucky lady. I’d have stayed in the galley to explain that eating was a good means of preventing starvation, but it’d have been no good.

  I climbed to the next deck. Think of what that poor Kelly had told me. What was it? They wouldn’t even let her to LA, for the California Game. She tried bribing me with her poor ravaged body, just like she’d paid Mr Squeaky Clean Bill for providing her drugs.

  Weird words.

  The poor lass was just demented—or else she was also addicted to gambling. I knocked at the door Chanel had told me: the long conference cabin. I was glad I’d donned clean and was scented like a rose garden. Maybe this was my reward, Gina wreaking her unsated lust on my poor defenceless frame?

  The long boardroom was empty. A few papers were strewn here and there, crumples being fed into a portable shredder by Blanche and two stewardesses. Gina reclined, good enough to eat.

  “Yes, Gina?” I said, all confidence and intimacy.

  She hardly glanced up.

  “Oh, Lovejoy.” I was suddenly new and insignificant. “To Manfredi’s. Soonest” She looked past me. “Blanche? Get me that Harvard architect. Two minutes.”

  “Yes, Miz Gina.”

  “Er… ?” I said, still oozing charm.

  She noticed me with irritation. “Manfredi’s, Lovejoy. Go.”

  I cleared my throat. “Er, I don’t think I quite understand —”

  Hands grabbed me, mostly Tye’s but with assistance from two other hulks. I was flung into my old gear, mercifully cleaned, hustled into the shore boat, and rushed breathless and bewildered to a waiting motor on shore.

  Well, I’d prayed for an end to my servitude, but I was narked now it had come.

  I didn’t know it, but next dawn was the day I’d start killing people.

  ONCE, I knew this bloke Ted who wrote what he called copy. Ted was a university academic, and like the rest he moonlighted on his Eng Lit job by scribing for newspapers. A sad bloke, he was simply one of these geezers who’d never done anything except teach — never known an honest day’s labour. He was made redundant in the Great Cutbacks. Suddenly he found himself facing the stark truth that he was unemployable. Now he trundles a handcart about Surrey villages scouring for tat, old rubbish which he tries to sell. He does it badly, needless to say. If he’d ever worked, with hands, he’d have been okay. As it is, he’s had to invent a conspiracy among his university alumni to justify his bitterness. Tells everybody they were all jealous.

  We all do it. I did it, that morning when Fredo arrived and found me disgruntled on the pavement. He said very little, just to get the garbage out in the alleyway because Josephus was having woman trouble.

  “I asked Nicko for a few days off,” I lied brightly.

  “Sure.” New York’s elastic word speaks volumes.

  Della was thrilled I was with them again. Jonie came and told me I’d missed a brawl in the bar between two guys berserk over the Superbowl. Lil told me she’d known all along I was crazy over her. Two new waitresses, and a new shabby shuffler to help Fredo in the kitchen, and we were ready to cope with Manhattan. I was angry, dejected in the best Ted manner, fuming to myself as I started smiling, giving out my cheery “Hi, there!” to all and sundry.

  I’m not really posh-minded. No, honestly I’m not. But I really had thought that on the Gina, first names with Nicko and all that, I was plugged in to something special. As New Yorkers bowled in for breakfast and my routine banter, I found myself thinking over oddities. Bill—who was he? Nicko owned the world, sure. And Gina ran much of it, sure. But whenever anybody spoke of reporting or checking or approving, it was always Jennie’s name that cropped up. And Orly was her oppo.

  “I reckon Dallas Cowboys aren’t in it this year,” I told a driver I recognized. I didn’t understand who the Cowboys were, but remembered he was for. His trigger phrase reflexed him into a soliloquy that gave me time to think.

  The California Game? I’d been given orders to report nightly to Gina. Any progress on Moira Hawkins and her loony Sherlock plan. Yet here I was washing and serving at Fredo’s joint when Gina and the Gina were a-bobbing on the briny of Long Island Sound.

  “They’re too erratic, for one thing,” I challenged my customer, into his third mound of pancakes. (You won’t believe this, but he poured syrup over them, next to four rashers of bacon. Warning: American grub’s lovely; its arrangement takes some beating.)

  “Tell me who’s more consistent!”

  “Look at the league tables,” I said, doing that American shrug —a simultaneous grin and nodded headwag which encourages instant denials.

  Did Gina now expect me to phone every evening with my pr
ogress report? There couldn’t of course be any progress. There never is on a grailer. There can’t be, for they’re all myths, dreamt up by mystics and purveyors of illicit scams. You can invent some yourself. Do it today: precious diamonds from South Africa bigger than any on earth; limitless gold from the ocean floor; rare antiques in attics the world over. You only have to dream it up, and antique dealers will rush to market it for you. The fact that it doesn’t exist won’t matter. That’s what a grailer is, rainbow gold. I’m not being unromantic. I’m only trying to warn you your friend’s scheme of importing rare tapestries from the Punjab, ten cents a time and unlimited profit, is crud.

  “Dallas, schmallas.” I replenished my customer’s coffee while he went wild and starting calling along the counter for allies to set this jerk straight.

  I mean, I know an actor who’s fourteenth in line to the Throne. (Incidentally, so does everybody else in the U.K., but we're all too polite to mention it, him being the wrong side of the blanket and everything, and anyway, we all like his TV series, evening Thursdays unless they've changed it.) Well, this right royal bloke could reap the world, if you think of it. He’s a born grailer. Why? Because he could sell his story, his opinions, even his name for vasto gelto, and live plushly ever after. And does he? Not on your life. He simply ploughs the theatres, does auditions, is downcast when he doesn’t get them, rejoices when he does, the whole acting gig.

  Why doesn’t he? Because he’s not thick, that’s why. I once met him at an antiques auction. He was bidding for a miniature portrait. I tipped him off that it was on ivory and badly warped. He said ta, slipped me a fiver and we had a bit of a chat. I waxed indignant that the auctioneer—it wasn’t a thousand miles from Sotheby’s, Bond Street—hadn’t sent somebody over to point the defect out.