Kiss Me Quick

by Miller, Danny

  ‘Henry?’

  Pierce slowly moved away from the light towards the other side of the room.

  ‘Henry, what you doing?’

  There was a theatrical pause, then Pierce’s deliberate tones. ‘Lurking in the shadows, what else?’

  Pierce headed over to the makeshift bar, his white stick tapping away before him. His antennae located a bar stool and he sat on it, bolt upright, his feet still firmly on the floor. He laid his white stick on the bar, cracked his knuckles, then folded his arms. Ready now. He gave a knowing sigh of disappointment and said, ‘So, it’s come to this.’

  Vaughn took in his situation, and asked the wrong question, ‘How did I end up down here?’

  Silence.

  Vaughn nodded on realizing that the information was useless to him anyway. ‘That gear you gave me, Henry, it’s poison.’

  ‘So it seems. And you’re the one who’s been knocking it out, putting it on the street.’

  ‘You gave it to me! Said it was good!’

  ‘It was good. Just too good.’

  ‘I’m not taking the collar for this, Henry. You gave me the gear.’

  ‘And why did I give you the gear?’ Vaughn remained silent. ‘That’s right, what are you going to do, boy? Go to the bogies, tell them it’s not your fault? They’ll ask you where you got it. You’ll tell them the truth, that you got it from me. They’ll come to me, ask me why I gave it to you. I’ll tell them the truth, how I gave you heroin as payment. Payment for services rendered, a job well done.’

  ‘You made me!’

  In a flash, Pierce was on his feet, the white stick was off the bar and raised in his hand. He bolted over to Vaughn and smashed it down across his lap.

  Vaughn let out a primordial scream and closed his eyes until the initial agony subsided. Then opened them to find Henry Pierce was perched again on the stool and the white stick resting on the makeshift bar. Like nothing had happened.

  Pierce continued: ‘But the job wasn’t well done, was it, boy?’

  Vaughn, through the pain, whimpered, ‘No.’

  ‘Because the body was washed up on the beach. The body of evidence was washed up on the fucking beach for some cunt to find it.’

  Vaughn pleaded, through tears, ‘I did what you said, Henry, I swear to God. You were there! I cut the head off.’

  The misery was seared on to Vaughn’s face, not from his burning lap, where the white stick had left a welt, but from the memory. The memory of that night. The lock-up turned charnel house, where Vaughn, under Pierce’s guidance, had gone about his gruesome task. It was to be Vaughn’s big break into the big time; and to be no longer just a lowly driver. But that night Vaughn had discovered something important about himself: he wasn’t cut out for the big time. He didn’t have the heart for it, or the balls for it, and he certainly didn’t have the stomach for it. He had thrown up remorselessly throughout the whole ordeal.

  Pierce, all matter-of-fact: ‘I told you, boy, to stab his chest, puncture his lungs, let the fucking air out the tyres.’

  Vaughn, hysterical now, and he would have stamped his feet if they weren’t tied together, bawled out, ‘You didn’t, you didn’t tell me that! You didn’t tell me that you didn’t tell me that you didn’t tell me that you didn’t tell …!’

  Pierce, up again, the stick in his hand raised, and Vaughn, with Pavlovian obedience, stopped his whining and squeezed his eyes shut. But, unable to do anything about his ears, he heard the dead air around him slice open as the cane smashed down on to his lap. No cry of pain this time. Legs too numb, throat too sore. Just the burn of piss on his red-hot skinny legs. He’d thought he was all pissed out, but he was wrong. He now pissed like a racehorse. The excess – and there was excess – puddled up on the plastic chair. His eyes opened to the same routine: Pierce on the stool, cane on the bar. Like nothing had happened.

  Vaughn realized that Pierce could keep up this routine all night. And realized that he himself couldn’t. For a moment he thought that his plan had worked: Marcus Three had supplied him with the barbs, and he had killed himself, and he was dead. But, instead of being guided by seraph emissaries to the Elysian Fields to join his Wendy, he had gone to Hell. And this was to be his eternity. His personal divine comedy.

  ‘Soiled yourself, boy?’ Pierce said with a grimace and a tut-tut. But it was cartoon disgust, since he didn’t expect anything else from Vaughn. He would have been disappointed with anything else. Vaughn’s nervous disposition and his terrified bladder were the source of much amusement to those in the know when gathered in the pubs, clubs and around the card tables of Brighton. He very much took after his father in that respect.

  Pierce continued, ‘The truth, for you, isn’t the best way forward in this case. And that’s not even putting Jack into the equation.’

  Vaughn’s lips twitched, then shaped themselves into something that could loosely be described as a smile, as he was hit by a new thought. ‘Like you said, Henry, you got me to do the work, get rid of the body. I was following your orders. You fucked up as much as me. And Jack will come after you as much as me. So, maybe you should untie me, Henry, and we’ll call it quits, eh?’

  As soon as the last word ‘eh’ was out of his mouth, he knew it was a mistake, and closed his eyes and waited for the cane. It didn’t come. He opened his eyes and saw Henry Pierce still sitting on the stool, motionless and seemingly expressionless.

  ‘No doubt I’ll incur some wrath,’ Pierce said, ‘but I’m a man of good and long standing with Jack. Someone will have to take the fall, so who’s it going to be? Me or you? Who’s your money on?’ Vaughn, tied firmly to the plastic chair, still managed to sink lower into it. Pierce, head tilted up as if he was addressing an audience in the gallery, continued in a vein that seemed well rehearsed, as if he’d gone over it a thousand times – his story, his alibi. ‘I’ve got years of good service behind me. Diligently going about my work, never a complaint from the man. But you? You’re not worth the piss in your pants.’

  Pierce picked up the white stick from the bar, stood up and slowly circled his prey, twirling the cane in his heavy brutal hands. It resembled the laborious rotation of a propeller just started up, and Vaughn, leaning away as far as he could, viewed it as just as lethal.

  ‘Still, today, you find me in a giving mood. I want to help you, boy.’

  Vaughn looked through the propeller blades. ‘You do?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  Vaughn really didn’t know.

  ‘Now you’ve killed the girl,’ Pierce continued.

  Through fresh panic. ‘I swear to God, Henry, it wasn’t me. She didn’t get the gear off me. When I heard people were dying, I flushed away what I had left.’

  ‘Then how did she get it?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe she took it. Stole some before you flushed it?’

  ‘She wouldn’t.’

  ‘She must have. While you were asleep, she must have stolen some for her own personal use.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never underestimate a slip. They’ll rob the gold out of Granny’s teeth to get what they want. And you know that, boy.’

  Vaughn knew this wasn’t true of Wendy, but he nodded in agreement anyway. He didn’t want to feel the sting of that stick again. And it felt good agreeing with Pierce. It relieved what little guilt he had. It was the girl’s fault, not his. Blame absolved him, and right now he’d take all the absolution he could lay his hands on.

  ‘Let’s not kid ourselves, boy, the girl’s gone, God rest her soul. It’s out of our hands. She’s in a better place. She’s done and dusted.’

  There was a tremulous twitch of the bottom lip for the freshly grieving Vaughn as he said, ‘I … I loved her.’

  ‘Touched. But we must move on.’

  ‘Move on? It’s only just happened.’

  ‘Time, in this case, is of the essence. When Marcus Three called me and said you was here, my first reaction was: call the bogies, let him han
g! Then I thought again: “justice must be served”.’ Pierce stopped circling and stood in front of him. The cane in his left hand, his right hand gripped the gnarled handle and slowly began to twist off the top of the cane.

  Vaughn knew what was coming, because he’d seen that cane unscrewed, unsheathed and wielded before. Justice must be served. He closed his eyes and mumbled some prayers for the last-ditch get-out stakes: the ones that would get him back in good with God, and hopefully through the Pearly Gates.

  Swoosh. The sixteen-inch razor-sharp blade sliced through the air and cut the cord that bound Vaughn to the plastic chair. Vaughn, and those who knew Pierce, always suspected his blind routine was exactly that, a routine. An act, shtick, like the Red Indian in the ring, and the black-clad villain on the streets. And if there was any doubt about Pierce’s 20/20 vision in his one good eye, it was nixed at the point where Pierce spotted an opening of about half an inch between Vaughn’s arm and the chair. Just enough to get the blade in, and cut the cord that bound him.

  Vaughn opened his eyes to see Pierce cutting the other cord binding his legs. And, in a moment, he was free. He rubbed his wrists and looked up at Pierce, confused. But it was clear, even to Vaughn, that Henry Pierce had plans for him.

  Pierce, pragmatic: ‘Let’s start then with Bobbie – Bobbie LaVita. What have you heard?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Not even from your brother?’

  ‘We ain’t that close. He’s a copper.’

  Pierce pulled a grin. ‘Then you’ll love this. He’s been going, shall we say, beyond his brief. Not adhering to Scotland Yard’s strict code of conduct.’ Vaughn looked genuinely puzzled. Pierce gave an incredulous shake of the head and spelled it out. ‘He’s been giving her one, knocking her off, schtupping her. Showing the dog the bone. Sticking his—’

  ‘I get the picture, Henry. Are you sure?’

  ‘He’s been seen, spotted. Observed. Clocked.’

  For a man who was always a good few steps behind the game, and constantly caught in life’s blinding headlights, there was no wide-eyed amazement from Vaughn at this information. He wasn’t shocked. Bobbie and his brother did look good together. Even Vaughn could see that, in the drama that was unfolding, they were the two principals, the star turn. And he was happy to let them hog the stage as long as he could shuffle off it unscathed. ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘She’s got to go.’

  ‘Bobbie LaVita?’

  Pierce gave a solemn nod.

  ‘She’s done wrong, Henry, they both have, but … but does she deserve to die?’ Vaughn felt a genuine and overwhelming sadness that echoed his own loss. ‘Maybe … maybe they love each other …?’

  ‘Like you and your girl … whass-her-name?’

  ‘Her name is Wendy … Wendy,’ he said, sinking down further and squelching about in the warm puddle on the bucket chair.

  ‘Yours was a pure, decent love,’ said Pierce, stepping around behind him and resting those violent hands on his bony, hunched shoulders. ‘But theirs, their love is wrong. All wrong.’

  Vaughn began to weep. Uncontrollable, chest-quaking, salt-wrenching sobs. ‘I … I … I …. I don’t … I don’t … I don’t wer … wer … want to hurt anyone.’

  ‘No one ever does,’ said a soothing and avuncular Old Henry Pierce.

  ‘Yer … yer … yer … You do.’

  ‘That’s true. Now, let’s get you out of those wet clothes.’

  CHAPTER 26

  DIRTY WEEKEND

  Crack!

  Nothing.

  Crack!

  Nothing.

  CRACK!

  That one did it, and Vince’s eyes opened. Bobbie was standing over him, the flat of her right hand primed and ready to smack him across the cheek again. His face stung, his vision going in and out of focus, but he could make out just enough to see he was back in his room at the Seaview Hotel.

  Bobbie grabbed him by the lapels with both hands and sat him upright. His head lolled back again. She wrapped her arms around his waist and heaved him off the bed and on to his feet – only for his dead weight to fall back on to the bed. Not giving up, she repeated the manoeuvre. Again he fell back. And this is how it went on for about twenty minutes, but she persevered. She slapped him some more, she pulled his hair, threw cold water in his face, and thus she kept him awake. She brewed up cups of hot black coffee and forced it down his throat. Sometimes he puked it up, which was good; sometimes he kept it down, which was better. Eventually she got him to his feet. With his arms draped around her shoulders, she walked him around the room. She was exhausted and bruised, through him falling over and landing on top of her, or being pushed against the hard edges of the furniture under his collapsing weight. But she persevered and persevered until he had beaten whatever was running through him, and his body was again running, albeit shakily, under its own steam.

  ‘Thank you,’ were the first coherent words out of his mouth. He was sitting in a hot bath and Bobbie perched on the edge of it. With his vision no longer blurred, he saw she was wearing drainpipe blue jeans that were rolled up to just below the knee; ballet-pump style black shoes and a tight-fitting white and blue hooped Breton jumper. Although she was tired, devoid of her usual monochrome make-up with its pale powders and harsh black eyeliners, she looked younger than he’d ever seen her before, her skin taut and surprisingly olive-toned.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  Vince considered this, then after a few moments said, ‘I went to a party.’

  ‘Whose party?’

  ‘Dickie Eton’s.’

  Bobbie’s eyes widened. She looked alarmed. ‘What are you talking about, Vincent?’

  ‘You know about Dickie Eton’s parties?’

  ‘I’ve been to one,’ said Bobbie. ‘I left when everyone started taking their clothes off. What the hell were you doing there? And what the hell did you take?’

  Vaughn shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut in concentration, until a memory spiked. ‘They put something in my drink,’ he said.

  Bobbie, confused. ‘You got drunk?’

  ‘I don’t drink.’ He plucked the cigarette she was smoking out of her hand and took a long drag. He held down the fumes inside his chest, feeling the smoke scrape and scorch his lungs, then expelled it with a cough and a splutter.

  ‘And you obviously don’t smoke either,’ she said, taking the cigarette out of his hand.

  Vince looked at Bobbie and gave her a lazy smile. With his voice still smeary with the dope, he mumbled, ‘You look beautiful … you know that? You really are a very beautiful girl. The most beautiful, beautiful girl I’ve seen … the most beauti—’

  ‘Vincent!’ she yelled, cutting him short. She wasn’t smiling at the compliments, because the delivery was wrong – all wrong, slowed-down and vacant. This just didn’t sound at all like the quick-witted and insightful young detective she’d found herself falling in love with.

  He sensed her displeasure and ducked his head under the water.

  ‘You look awful,’ she said, as he resurfaced. ‘Try and remember what happened.’

  ‘They spiked my drink. Then … then I ended up back here …’

  ‘Then how do you explain all this?’ Her hand dipped into the bath and scooped away the soap bubbles covering his body. Vince saw bruising to his chest and arms, a gash across his ribs, his knees were torn to shreds, and he had welts to his body that looked like lash marks. The wound that caught his attention the most, and which his eye was oddly drawn to, was the smallest and the most imperceptible mark of all. In the fold of his right arm was a pinprick …

  And then the memory of the previous night rewound and spooled into place.

  The swimming pool, face down, naked, dead … The bodies crawling all over him … moving in on him … the boys and the girls … the doped-up sirens enticing him into the water … Vince rises to his bloodied knees … as bad a place to die as any, he’d thought … Dickie Eton, like Nero or Caligula,
sitting on his poolside throne … shouts out to Tobin to stop … Eddie Tobin, can’t help himself, follows through with more kicks to the gut … stamps his heel in his face … Vince chokes at the smell of dried dog shit … The cold white marble was surprisingly warm to the touch … the blow to the gut. Vince is chopped to the floor, doubled over … Like a movie set … Cecil B. DeMille … Sodom and Gomorrah … white marbled columns, fountains, a waterfall in the corner … The boys and the girls naked, fucking, an orgy … Pills ingested, powders snorted, dope smoked, dope shot and that crazy music whirling around his head … Vince thrown to the floor … The laughter getting louder, raucous, repellent, the music even more disorientating … Dragged through another long hallway, the paintings on the walls getting dirtier and dirtier, uglier and uglier. Sex and death, sex and death … Vince hauled to his feet, out of the chair, taken out of the wood-panelled study before the Big Nod kicks in … Tobin to one side, that pugnacious face, the spittle-webbed mouth laughing and snarling … On the other side, the lad with the soft smiling face and the darker purpose …

  … His body contaminated, his blood polluted, forever corrupted. Shutting him down … That lethal dose of dirty brown in his bloodstream … The spike goes in, the bad heroin is injected into him, execution style. Just business … The door opens, Nick Soroya enters, hands behind his back. A gun? A knife? No … Vince in the chair, just his head floating, disembodied, limbs numb. Mickey Finn in the ice cool glass of Coke … Eddie Tobin sitting at the desk, his thin lips laughing. Oh the irony! … Tobin delivering the deadly joke with its killer punchline … ‘You killed him, Treadwell. You slaughtered him …’

  … Vince sat bolt upright, throwing off the sheet of bubbles that covered him; Bobbie jumped up as a wave of water splashed over the side of the bath.

  ‘Vincent!’ Bobbie’s cry shook Vincent out of his recalled vision. ‘What’s wrong?’