by Joe McNally
‘She watches them every night. If she sees a girl near their car, they drive this big silver Beemer, she just runs at them, grabs the girl by the wrist and starts yelling that she’s being abducted. For all there’s plenty crime in Deadwood, the majority are good, clean living folk. When Alice starts yelling, either the gang drive off or the girl runs away embarrassed.’
‘She’s a brave kid, but what are the cops doing about these bastards?’
‘The gang targets girls whose parents don’t give a fuck anyway. Junkies, alkies…I know that sounds rich coming from me, but, well, anyway, the folk living there either hate cops or are too scared to talk to them. You rarely see a uniform in Deadwood. Some say the cops treat it as a no-go area.’
I watched him, wondering how he could be so matter of fact. I said, ‘You can’t stay there, Ben, not for any length of time. There’s room for you at our place and you’d be welcome.’
‘I know. Thanks, Eddie. My options are limited just now. Alice is in charge, I’m afraid…that’s the deal I made. But I’m trying to kind of ride a sensible race with it. Keep her safe, and work on her steadily.’
‘If I can help, you only need to ask.’
He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled, ‘Thanks, my friend. We’ll get there, though it might be a longer haul than I’d thought. I saw Alice this morning wandering the streets pushing leaflets through the doors. She’d gone and applied for a community grant to get five thousand printed.’ Ben pulled one from his pocket.
In large letters across the top it read DRAT - Deadwood Rejects All Traffickers. There was a picture of a mean-faced boy, I wouldn’t have said he was a man, but Alice had made a pretty good Wanted poster out of him. ‘Mister Big, I take it?’
‘As far as Alice is concerned. DJ he calls himself. Talks like a Detroit rapper, though I doubt he’s anything but a gofer. I don’t know who’s running things, and I don’t really want to know, but DJ’s warned me a couple of times to keep Alice out of his face, as he puts it. Her latest is trying to get this poster printed in the Liverpool Echo. She took some copies in this afternoon and tried for a meeting with the editor, who I happen to know, Jimmy Baker.’
‘But Alice didn’t know you knew him?’
‘Not until she got back. “Will you talk to him, Dad?” she asks, and I says, of course I will. And I did, I said, Jim, flush those leaflets down the toilet, and don’t take any calls from her.’
‘Best hope she doesn’t find that out,’ I said.
‘I keep trying to get her to see she can’t change the world, but she’s not ready to listen yet, so I wondered if Monty might help by sending Bruno over to have a quiet word with DJ. At least that was my plan when I left you that voicemail. I’m wondering now if that will just escalate things with whoever’s behind the whole racket.’ He sighed heavily and leaned back.
‘It’s your decision, Ben. I’m happy to have a word with Monty if you want me to.’
‘What would you do in my position?’
I’d already thought about that, and had briefly considered telling Ben that I’d deal with DJ, but I didn’t want him feeling inadequate or ashamed, ‘I’d be doing what you’re doing, Ben, trying to find an answer somehow.’
‘But would you call Monty?’
‘In your situation? No question.’
I was fit and strong, and angry and pig-headed and proud. Ben was wasted, physically weak, always tried to take a balanced view on life and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Even turds like DJ.
Ben leant forward, elbows on knees, ‘Would you mind, then? I know Monty spoke for me last week, and I don’t doubt he’d help if I called, but ever since that time I made a complete arse of myself in his box at Aintree, I’ve felt embarrassed speaking to him.’
‘No worries. I’ll see him on Friday at Cheltenham.’
‘Thanks, Eddie. You’re a gem.’
I smiled, ‘I don’t sparkle much these days. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
‘And you’ll ask him for Bruno?’
‘I’ll ask for Bruno Guta.’
Ben smiled with relish, ‘He’s the man!’
11
Maven was in bed when I got home. She lay on the inside where she could see the stars through the window.
She had not spoken.
I slipped into bed hoping not to disturb her. My cold feet sensed the warmth from her legs but knew better than to go there. She lay on her back, her breathing the only sound. When I closed my eyes, the inside of my eyelids replayed my drive home…long, empty, twisting roads…fast in the headlights.
‘Bad news,’ Mave said quietly.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Daffodils.’
I turned my head, ‘You awake?’
‘Yep.’
‘Daffodils?’
‘Correct.’
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘Outside your picture window. I saw them this afternoon.’
‘So?’
‘What will you do without the snow to watch?’
‘Snow’ll be back.’
‘Not until winter.’
‘Betcha?’
‘How much?’
‘A pound.’
She drew her hand from below the quilt and spat in her palm and held her hand high, and I did the same and we sealed the bet, and she was silent again for a while.
‘Was Ben okay?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Hmm. Is Alice okay?’
‘She was in Crosby tonight.’
‘That’s not what I asked,’ Mave said.
‘I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Otherwise your mind will clang into gear and you’ll go back to your old ways…just when I’m getting you trained.’
‘In my world, night was always for working.’
‘I know.’
Silence.
She said, ‘I miss the sea.’
‘I know you do.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You’re melancholy, mostly.’
‘It shows?’
‘To me it does.’
‘I might go back.’
‘You can’t,’ I said.
‘Says who?’
‘Them’s the rules. Everybody thinks they can go back, or at least everybody who’s never tried going back.’
She spoke to the ceiling, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Philosophy in the Dark!’
I laughed quietly.
‘That was a sympathy chuckle.’
‘It was.’
‘What about Marie,’ Mave said, talking of my sister, ‘she’s going back?’
’She is. It’s coming back I’m worried about now.’
’She wouldn’t hurt Kim. She’ll be home as soon as they’ve sorted things out.’
‘What about Sonny?’ I asked. Sonny had been a father-figure to Mave for most of her life, and when she got rich, she employed him and brought him to live with us. She had urged Sonny to go to Australia with Kim and Marie, knowing it would make me feel better if he was watching over them. He’d been getting increasingly restless here, anyway.
‘He says he’s sent two postcards, but I haven’t seen one yet,’ she said.
‘Do you think he’s there for good?’
‘Sonny will be there until the NBD, the next big disappointment, and that’ll shift his extrovert gearstick into reverse, and he’ll look back to the northern hemisphere where the grass will suddenly have become greener again.’
‘You’ve got a fair handle on him, haven’t you?’
‘Well, I can never remember a time when he wasn’t around, so it’s pretty much soaked into me. Osmosis, I believe they call it.’
’So, how come you know him so much better than he knows himself? Doesn’t osmosis work both ways?’
‘Not always. Seldom always.’
‘I wonder if Alice knows Ben as well as you know Sonny?’
‘Everybody will know Ben. Public alcoholics have no secrets. That’s what can make them so endearing, es
pecially the recovering ones.’
’True, I suppose.’
Mave said, ’I think you’ll find Alice is looking after Ben, as much as he’s looking after her.’
‘Well, Ben’s now looking for backup.’ I told her about Bruno Guta and about what Alice had been up to.
‘Jeez! I thought I took chances when I was a kid,’ Mave said, ‘that’s chemistry for you. The teenage brain is hard-wired to risk. Things don’t start levelling out until they’re pushing eighteen, nineteen. That’s a fact.’
‘Is it?’ I said.
‘Scientifically proven.’
‘I wish Alice would just have stuck with the normal craziness, then, like playing chicken. Putting up Wanted posters of the local bad guy and canvassing the city press to run the story is teenage risk times a hundred.’
Mave said,’ What about the police? I thought there were entire units set up these days to go after these traffickers?’
’Nobody in Deadwood will talk. No witnesses. Ben was saying that some regard it as a no-go zone for cops, full stop.’
‘Jeez, what the hell is Ben doing even letting her live in a place like that?’
‘It’s Alice who wants to be there. Ben doesn’t get to choose.’
‘Eddie, come on! There’s a level where you’ve got to draw the line!’
‘I think Ben takes the view that he lost all privileges with Alice a long time ago. She was running wild for years. At least he has a relationship with her now. And he will protect her. That’s why he called me about Bruno Guta.’
‘Were you tempted to tell Ben you would have a word with this DJ character?’
‘At first, maybe, but it would have been a bad idea for a number of reasons. Best leave it to the pros.’
‘What’s this Bruno fella like?’
‘Very quiet. You’d hardly know he’s around. Been with Monty since that car crash. He’ll be good at what he does.’
‘It sounds like Ben must know what he does, if he remembers him so well through all those hangovers. Why would old Monty want a bodyguard?’
‘He doesn’t call him a bodyguard. He’s a personal assistant. Apparently he was on the same road as Monty when the accident happened, and he pulled him out of the burning car.’
‘And got himself a job for life.’
‘Looks like it.’
Mave said, ‘Monty Bearak. Hardly a Merseyside name. And he talks posh.’
‘His father won the pools in the sixties and sent him to a private school, so Ben says.’
‘The champagne socialists.’
I sighed, ‘Mave, it’s late to be getting into political shit.’
She was quiet for a while, then she put a warm hand on my arm. I turned to her. She said, ‘Why don’t you ask Alice up for the weekend when Kim comes home?’
'I don’t think anything is going to sidetrack Alice, not even Kim.’
’Sounds like she’d steamroller him, anyway. He’d be much too gentle for her.’
‘Probably.’
Mave turned on her side, away from me. As I drifted off, Mave said quietly, ‘Is Alice going to be all right?’
I hesitated, knowing what she was really asking before she could settle to sleep, and knowing too that my whispered answer would be a commitment and a promise, ‘Yes.’
12
Mave asked if I wanted to shower first. ‘Nah. I’m going out for a run.’
‘You’ve just eaten breakfast.’
‘That’s why I’m going out for a run.’
‘You’ll die.’
‘Of what?’
‘Don’t you get cramp or something if you exercise after eating, and fall over and drown?’
‘That’s swimmers.’
Mave nodded toward the big window, which featured a downpour in all its glory, ‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘I only had toast. And, what would you know about exercise, before or after eating?’
‘My brain burns more calories than a whole Grand National full of jockeys, speaking of which, why aren’t you going to Cheltenham today?’
‘No rides.’
‘That’s never stopped you. You could miss a good spare.’
‘There’ll be plenty in the pecking order before me for the Festival spares. No point driving hundreds of miles to mope around green with envy.’
‘Well, I’m not babysitting you. I’ve got work to do.’
‘Work away. I might drive back down to see Ben.’
Travelling south on the M6, the rain seemed to ease in five-mile swathes, like layers of curtain, until I reached clear skies. It was bright in Liverpool. Ben and I walked by the canal close to Anchor Bridge, which cut across the Grand National course.
I’d known this canal only through its geographical reference as a Grand National jump, the Canal Turn, where you need to steer your horse at right angles, otherwise you run into a high wire fence bordering the inside of the Leeds Liverpool canal.
‘Seems odd walking here, by the actual canal after all these years,’ I said.
‘Not the place you build in your head when you’re watching the big race, is it?’
‘I remember it from when I was a kid. I never thought there was a real canal, I just thought that was its name, if you know what I mean, like Becher’s Brook.’
‘I know what you mean.’
We walked beside the brown water past half-sunken supermarket trollies and old tyres, bottles, bags and a burst football. ‘Kind of wish I’d never come, now,’ I said.
’Sorry, Eddie, I should’ve picked a better place.’
I put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and laughed, ‘Don’t worry. My fault for being a romantic.’
‘I know the feeling. Met plenty drinkers who were romantics. Was one myself for years, always convinced I’d write a big, big story…win a Pulitzer.’
‘There’s time enough.’
He laughed. I said, ‘Coincidentally, it’s one of the reasons I came to see you.’
I told Ben about my conversation with Dil, and about Jon Vogel, the starter’s assistant. ‘Make a hell of a story for you, if you cracked it,’ I said.
‘It would.’
He was quiet for a dozen strides, then said, ‘What made you think of me?’
‘After I spoke to Dil yesterday, I picked up the phone to tell Peter McCarthy about it, then got your voicemail. That planted the seed.’
He turned to me, ‘Aren’t you obliged to report this to McCarthy, to tell the authorities?’
‘Not really. It’s just a theory. It’s not as if I have evidence. Vogel might have nothing to do with it. But somebody got at those two horses and there’s every chance a few others are lined up. Could be a big story there, no matter who’s behind it. Might even be one for the Pulitzer.’
Ben smiled, ‘Big as it might turn out, I doubt an American newspaper would be interested, so that’s the Pulitzer gone before we start.’
’Shame. We should have one for racing, the Pullupzer prize.’
Ben laughed properly. I was really beginning to like that laugh.
‘Maybe Monty would sponsor that,’ Ben said, ‘you should ask him tomorrow.’
‘Let’s settle for Monty helping make your lives easier while you’re in Deadwood. If you get a big story out of this, maybe it’ll land you back in a good job again.’
Smiling, he shook his head, ‘The days of high paid reporters are gone forever, Eddie, aside from the elite few. But I’ll settle for seeing my name in lights. It’ll help land some freelance stuff at higher rates.’
‘You working on anything just now?’
‘Tractors.’
I looked at him. He said, ‘I’m writing a piece for Big Red Tractors.’
‘There’s a magazine called Big Red Tractors?’
‘You’d be amazed what magazines are out there. None of them pays much, but I can rattle out a dozen articles a week.’
‘What if this wild horses job starts taking up all your time?’
‘We’ll get by, Eddie
, don’t worry.’
I knew better than to offer money, but I’d find a way if he needed it. I said, ‘I’ll help in the background as best I can. If you do the legwork, you can call me anytime and we’ll see what we come up with.’
‘Any thoughts on when these people might try again?’
‘There’s a hot favourite in the Gold Cup tomorrow.’
‘You riding?’
‘Not in the Gold Cup. Got one in the Triumph.’
‘For Dil?’
‘For Ben Tylutki.’
‘Any chance?’
‘You never know.’
‘That means nearer last than first. I haven’t forgotten the lingo, Eddie!’ He put his arm around me, pulling my head onto his shoulder, reminding me of my big winner in The Supreme when Bomber had rested his head on mine. Happy days.
Driving home, I felt a mixture of satisfaction at having Ben involved, and guilt at the thought I’d really just palmed him off with my troubles.
But the troubles weren’t mine alone. Dil and Vita would benefit from anything Ben could find out.
When I reached home, I called Ben, ‘Listen, why don’t you hold off on that Vogel story for now? I think I might be able to find somebody who’ll pay you up front to do the legwork.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say no to the money, Eddie so long as it’s not coming out of your pocket. And it’ll give me a day or two to try and get Alice sorted out.’
‘That’s good. I’ll speak to Monty tomorrow, and then I’ll try and pin Vita Brodie down. Not literally, of course.’
‘Of course!’ Ben laughed, ‘Is she the paymaster general, then?’
’She’s the big boss with the big budget.’
‘Tell her I’ll settle for NUJ rates.’
‘I’ll aim for a bonus if you crack it.’
‘Ha! Every day’s a bonus for me, Eddie, every day.’
I wondered once more at Ben’s appetite for life, and wondered too if I would have survived what he’d been through. I’d have counted myself cursed. Ben lived as though he’d been blessed.
13
In Monty Bearak’s glass-fronted hospitality box a hundred feet above the Cheltenham crowds, I saw Bruno Guta only because I was looking for him. The box held fifty people. Post-lunch coffee was being served and Monty had just introduced me as the star attraction, who was certain to tip a winner or two.