by Ted Lewis
Storey has his head in his hands and is staring vacantly at the top of his counter. I take another fiver off my roll and add it to the others between the salt and pepper. Then Con and Charlie and myself have another go at getting to the exit.
This time we make it and as we pass into the fresh night air Con shakes his head and says, “It’s a disgrace to the game, those over-the-top tackles.”
“Shouldn’t ever be allowed,” I say. “Could break a fellow’s leg that way. Ruin his career, just like that.”
--
Hume
On the way back west I try and get Gerald and Les again but they’re still unavailable. Con drives very carefully so as not to give any wandering law a reason for pulling us in to the curb. Charlie sits in the back without saying a word, but he’s not sitting quietly because he’s found a packet of crisps in one of his pockets and he’s tucking in as if he hasn’t a care in the world. I’m not looking forward to having Charlie in my pocket indefinitely but when it’s only this kind of long shot that’s going to pay off I’ve got no choice but to wear him. He crunches away in the back completely unaware that there may be more than one way of getting his sister out of the woodwork.
“I want you to go to my place first,” I tell Con. “Charlie’ll be staying with me tonight so you take him up there and stay with him while I walk round and try to get hold of Gerald and Les. If Tommy phones take the message.”
“Right,” says Con.
The traffic’s turning out now, most of it suburb-bound after the passengers have had a night out in London’s wonderful West End. The wind has got up again and is sweeping the broad wasteland of the Elephant with sheets of drizzle.
We arrive outside my flat and I give Con the extra keys and Con helps Charlie out of the Scimitar and into my place and I slide over into the driver’s seat and take the car round to the club. When I get inside I collar Alex the doorman.
“Have Gerald or Les phoned in?” I ask him.
“Not as yet, Mr. Carter,” he says.
“Jesus,” I say. “And they gave you no idea of where they’d be?”
“Well, they went out with the Americans so it could be the Antibes or then again it could be Arabella’s Stable.”
Yes, I think to myself, and knowing Gerald and Les it could be Terri Palin’s house in Camden Town or some other amusement arcade. The Americans like a bit of English, especially if it is trained to act like the real upper crust. And isn’t it just fucking typical of Gerald and Les on a busy night like tonight to go out without leaving their tonking address?
“Mrs. Fletcher might know,” Alex says. “She’s still upstairs. She’s been interviewing a couple of performers.”
It often happens this time of night. Girls in this particular line of work never see daylight before midday and their free time starts at 1 am if they’re lucky.
“She still busy?”
“One of the acts is still up there.”
“Get her on the extension for me. I’ll talk to her at the bar.”
Alex walks away to his duty and I make my way through into the bar. Billy has the mixture waiting for me and presents it to me like he’s auditioning in front of Nureyev. Then for the second time that night I get the tones of Peter the Dutchman’s voice like treacle in my earhole.
“I’ll buy my own this time,” he says. “The other way’s too much like hard work.”
“And you’ll know all about the other way,” I tell him.
He slides onto the next stool but one, knowing better than to push his luck by getting on the closer one.
“Who let you in, anyway?” I ask him.
“Don’t be like that, Jack,” he says.
Billy the barman discreetly places himself closer to me than he does to Peter and waits. Peter asks for a Campari and soda and the barman still waits until I give him a weary nod and he goes off to do his stuff.
“Nice high-class staff you’ve got in here these days,” Peter says, watching Billy reach up for the Campari bottle.
“Like the clientele,” I say.
“Oh, that’s right,” Peter says, “you were asking how I got in. Well, I got in by Gerald and Les’s invitation. I was on my way when you saw me in Maurice’s. Dutch Courage, if you’ll pardon the pun. I thought Gerald and Les would have put you in it, and I would have mentioned it only I didn’t think Maurice’s was the time or the place. Not for that, anyway.”
The barman’s extension rings and he lifts the receiver. I look at Peter.
“Put me in what?”
“Put you in why Gerald and Les are talking to me. The little tickle I’ve brought them. The little outing.” Billy brings the telephone over to my part of the bar.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” he says.
I motion for him to put the phone down.
“You’ve brought a job to Gerald and Les?” I say to Peter.
“That’s right,” he says.
“And they’re buying it in?”
“Even righter.”
I can hear Audrey speaking on the other end of the line. I don’t want Peter’s pleasure to be greater than it already is so I fake a faint grin and shake my head and pick up the receiver.
“Jack?” Audrey says.
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?” she says. “You didn’t answer.”
From the way she’s talking she sounds as though she’s stolen more than one or two away during the course of the evening.
I look at Peter and I say, “I can’t talk right at the moment. Shall I come up?”
Audrey giggles. “You can come up anytime,” she says. “All the way up.”
I hope the loudness of Audrey’s oiled-up voice isn’t carrying as far as Peter.
“I’ll come up, then.”
“I don’t know whether I ought to let you,” she says. “I might not be able to stand the competition. I might be doing a very silly thing in letting you come up right this moment.” I put the phone down before she rabbits on any longer.
“Excuse me,” I say to Peter.
“Anytime,” Peter says.
“Let him know where the ladies’ is,” I say to Billy and walk out of the bar over to the lift and I press the button and get in. This time when I get out of the lift there is a little squit called Harris sitting on the landing chair. This is something else that’s typical of Gerald and Les; when they’re holding court only the heaviest will do but when there’s only Audrey there they put out something thatwouldn’t stop Tom
and Jerry.
I press the button and go through the doors and once again I’m in the penthouse. Only this time instead of having the Fletcher brothers’ lovely faces to gaze at there is Audrey and there is this little cracker of a West Indian sitting on the leather settee where Gerald usually sits. Audrey’s standing by the stereo controls swaying a bit, a full glass in her hand.
The door slides to behind me.
“And now,” says Audrey, “the Jacaranda Club proudly presents Soho’s latest sensation, Claudia.”
Audrey presses a button and a Shirley Bassey number starts to belt out from all four corners of the room. Claudia Cornell Wilde stands up and although she is just wearing her street clothes she begins to give an impression of what she’s presumably going to be doing downstairs from next week on. Audrey does her own impression of what the spade chick’s doing and wafts across the room towards me. But it isn’t the time or the place for indulging in what I’d like to indulge in so I start to make for the stereo. But to get there I have to negotiate the sunken bit and I coincide with Audrey halfway across. She staggers into me and the only way to avoid collapsing on the floor is to collapse onto one of the settees. Some of Audrey’s drink spills onto the front of my shirt.
She slides one of her legs on top of mine and pushes her mouth against my ear and says, “Those two bastards
are out playing games at Palin’s tonight so why shouldn’t we play our own games here?”
“Audrey . . . ”
“What’s the matter? Shy are you? She’d be game, no trouble. She’s high as a kite.”
“Audrey . . . ”
“I’d bleeding murder anybody you screwed on your own,” she says. “But this’d be different.” She giggles. “Besides, I’d like to see how you’d handle a bit of black. Or vice versa.”
Her hand begins to slip down the front of my shirt but before she goes any farther I jerk myself up out of the leather and go over to the stereo and switch it off. The spade stops as if she’s been unplugged and Audrey stares up at me from the settee.
“Business, Audrey,” I say. “Or have you forgotten all about it? About the business that was discussed this afternoon?”
Audrey doesn’t say anything. She knows how important the present matter is but at the same time she never likes to admit she’s in the wrong or she’s acted stupid.
“I’ve got some news that’s got to be passed on,” I tell her. “All right?”
Audrey straightens herself up a bit and without looking at the spade or at me she says, “All right, all right. Come back next Monday at one and we’ll work out a schedule.”
The spade bird doesn’t move so Audrey gets up and drapes the spade bird’s coat round her shoulders and helps her towards the door.
“Forget it,” Audrey says. “I’ll phone you when you can hear.”
The door slides open and the spade bird floats out. Audrey walks over to the cocktail cabinet and pours herself another drink then makes a production out of staring through the plate glass.
“It’s a pity you’re Gerald’s wife,” I tell her.
She doesn’t answer.
“Because that means I can’t give you a belting without him seeing the marks.”
Audrey walks back to the settee and sits down.
“You must be fucking barmy carrying on in front of that spade,” I say. “Supposing she shopped you to Gerald? What do you think would happen to you then?”
“She was high. She didn’t know what was happening.”
“You hope. You fucking hope.”
Audrey lights a cigarette and says, “Anyway, what about the business? What’s the business you’re so bleeding keen to talk about?”
“Where’s Gerald and Les?”
“They said they were going to Arabella’s first. Whether they did or not I don’t know. All I do know is it’s for certain they won’t be there now and they won’t be back before breakfast, not if they go to Palin’s.”
Jesus Christ, I think to myself. I walk over to the cocktail cabinet and pour myself a drink.
“Why, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Everything’s going up the spout. I saw Finbow earlier and he’s been shopped.”
“Shopped?”
“That picture you took of us all’s going to be all over tomorrow’s Express.”
“Jesus.”
“So. I think it’s something Gerald and Les ought to know about, don’t you?”
“But who’d want to do Finbow?”
I down my drink. “If he finds out, he’ll let us know. But as Mallory’s the only other person who knows about that picture outside of us four, then Mallory’s got to have something to do with it, hasn’t he? And Mallory being Jimmy’s lawyer and Gerald and Les’s lawyer makes that fact all the more interesting, doesn’t it?”
I walk over to the door.
“I’m going out to try and get hold of those two characters. Not only do I have to find Jimmy Swann, I have to find Gerald and Les as well. If they get back here before I do don’t tell them about Finbow. I don’t want them going off half cocked and fucking things up even more.”
Arabella’s Stable is in Bayswater. At that time of night it only takes me five minutes to drive Con’s car over there. I park it just off the Bayswater Road. The night is drying out again and scraps of cloud race across the face of a cold-glowing moon. The city’s night sounds buzz away and beyond the Bayswater rooftops. The clear wind makes me feel fresher than I’ve felt all evening. But Arabella’s will soon take care of that for me.
The usual would-be heavies are on the door. They stand there in their D.J.s with their hands behind their backs the way they think the real ones do it. Their hair is washed and blown and their sharp chins are smooth and shiny with aftershave and the hardest time any of them ever had is fighting a cold. All they ever have to do at Arabella’s is take drinks away from drunks and put the drunks in taxis. But they think they’re shit hot and when I show up on the steps they give me the sneer to show me how big-time they are. I smile sweetly back at them and go through into the foyer.
Leaning over the reception desk are a couple of the kind of characters I really like to do business with. Upper-crust tearaways making their gambling money by adding a Rt. Hon. or a Lord to Arabella’s wages list. The hard work they do is to walk about the place asking the clients if everything’s all right and at the same time making the clients feel they should be asking the tearaways instead. And as I expect when I walk over to them to inquire after my employers I get the silent treatment. I stand there for a minute or two while they study whatever it is that’s fascinating them on the desk’s surface and then I lean forward and put my face as close as I can to theirs without being poisoned by the hair-spray fumes and I say, “Shop.”
One of them manages to raise his head an inch or so and gazes into my eyes without saying anything.
“I’m from the Prudential,” I say. “I’ve brought you your divvy.”
The tearaway continues to gaze at me.
“What is it you want?” he says at last.
“I want to speak to Minton.”
The tearaway’s eyes flicker just to let me know that he’s weighed me up and he says, “I can assure you Mr. Minton won’t want to speak to you.”
“So be it,” I say, and I take hold of the tearaway by his hair and drag him across the top of the desk. The tearaway screams and the tasteful ornaments smash onto the floor and I keep pulling until the tearaway is on my side of the desk. Then still holding him by the hair I walk him over to the wall and slap him two or three times in the face. “Now, then,” I tell him, “I’m going to talk to Minton. I suggest you clear out your desk and pick up any ballpoint pens that might be yours and make it easy on yourself by not being here when Minton comes out to talk to you. Right?”
I let go of his hair and he slides down the wall and makes no attempt to move away from the baseboard. I walk away from him and over to the curtains that cover the entrance to the main part of Arabella’s and as I part the curtains I look back and notice that the bouncers have melted from the steps.
Beyond the curtain is a small corridor and at the end of this corridor there is a flight of steps curving down to the Stable Room. The corridor is painted a very deep dark green and the pictures on the walls have been specially painted to suit the decor. It’s all very tasteful and restrained which is quite ironic considering that the behaviour of the clientele is usually the exact opposite to the decor. As I descend the steps the wave of sound begins to wash over me and then I make the last turn and there before me is the Stable Room. In the first half of the room there are about twenty tables ranged round the walls and the only light comes from the small deep-red lamps on the tables. The light is so dim that you can hardly see from table to table, let alone across the room. There is about an acre of empty carpet which matches the colour of the lampshades. Beyond this room is another corridor with half a dozen curtained booths ranging on either side. The corridor leads through to the discotheque which is even darker than the rest of the place. Perhaps if the lighting was any better some well-known public figures who use the place wouldn’t be down there so often.
As I’m crossing the endless carpet a figure detaches
itself from one of the tables and swishes up to me.
“Mr. Carter,” says the figure.
“Hello, Minton,” I say. “Gerald and Les still here?”
“As far as I know, yes. I’ve been upstairs for half an hour. Their party’s in the last booth on the left.”
“Thanks.”
“Nice to see you, anyway. It’s been quite some time.”
“Yes. Since I was last down here you’ve taken on some staff that doesn’t know who I am.”
Minton goes rigid.
“Oh no,” he says. “Oh no,” and turns and scuttles away to see what’s happened beyond the curtains. I carry on to see if Gerald and Les are still in the third booth on the left-hand side of the corridor. I draw back the heavy velvet curtain. Gerald and Les aren’t there. Instead I’m looking into the face of a man called Hume.
On the narrow table in front of Hume is a bottle of champagne on ice and sitting next to him is a girl I’ve never met before but she’s just like the thousand others that do walk-ons in TV programs and the occasional commercial without being trained to do either. What they’re really trained to do is hang out where the bread is and where the names are and when they’re around it they believe that proximity breeds class. It’s not really that they want the money. It’s rather like the syndrome of the bird who’s always pulling married men—they just want to prove they can do it. And Hume, even if he is only a Detective Inspector, has plenty of bread and he’s certainly a name.
“They left ten minutes ago,” says Hume. “If it’s Gerald and Les you’re looking for.”
“Not surprising,” I say.
Hume smiles and indicates the champagne.
“They insisted,” he says. “They made me feel I’d really upset them if I didn’t accept a drink.”
The girl grins and thinks she looks knowing but all it proves is she’s watched a lot of people in the same line of business.