18
Von Joel's shorn hair looked lopsided and rather strange, and a few bruises were still visible on his face, but for a man who had been through major trauma and had only just come out of the hospital, he looked remarkably fit. As his handcuffs were unclocked he ran his gaze around the seedy bedroom. He sighed quietly as the police officer pocketed the cuffs and left him. As a comedown this place was spectacular. It was not simply seedy and scruffy and terminally downbeat; it was dirty. The rug was colorless with ingrained dirt, there was dirt on the window ledge and walls, he could smell dirt when he inhaled. The light in the room came from a single weak bulb coated with a film of dirt. McKinnes appeared at the doorway. He held up a sheet of paper. "Where's Jackson?" Von Joel asked. "Your pal M in ton says he wasn't on the robbery. He's o-nt an alibi. Same one he had last time."Von Joel delicately pinched the skin between his eyebrows with his forefinger and thumb. He looked at his narrow bed with weary eyes. "His word against mine," he said.
"Oy, look at me." McKinnes came into the room. "I'm not here to play games, Eddie. You've got more, I need more."
"And I've got a headache."
McKinnes considered the situation. It was Saturday night. It was settling-in time. On top of that, all things considered, the prisoner couldn't be feeling too grand. McKinnes decided he would go easy until they got down to the organized, on-the-record questioning first thing Monday morning. From then on there would be no kid gloves, no cotton wool. One way or another, easy or the hard way, Mr. Smartarse would come up with the goods.
"Sweet dreams, Eddie." McKinnes walked out of the bedroom. Von Joel glanced at his bags, made a face as he sniffed the air again. He went to the window and peered out past the curtain. There was nothing to see through the streaky grime. He dropped the curtain back in place and turned to the door again, frowning. He knew the set-up had been radically changed, too radically, and he would bet not all of the changes were visible yet.
"Where's Jackson?" he whispered.
f
Larry had nursed his wrath for the entire weekend. He brought it to the Hyde Park Hotel fresh and still simmering on Monday afternoon, after hanging around the station all morning trying, without any luck, to get a word with McKinnes. He drummed his fingers on the desk as the receptionist called Suite 340.
"It's ringing, sir."
Staying mad had been easy. The kids had played merry hell with his nerves and Susan had managed to say and do all the wrong things, over and over, in every permutation. Disruption and aggravation had been piled on his brooding. The brooding itself had been bad enough; isolation from the case had begun to give him a degree of unrest amounting to actual pain. All weekend, every time he thought of what had been done to him at St. John's Row, he wanted to yell. He wanted to lash out and hit something and pretend he had smashed the hairy vindictive kisser of Jimmy McKinnes.
There had been no corner of peace for Larry. Home was a bear garden, a noise-pit with the kids yelling and banging and Susan alternately squeaking and whining. Whenever he tried retreating into himself, thinking of his breakthrough night with Lola, the sexual jolt was short-circuited by the recollection of her malicious antics on the phone. All in all, the weekend had been undiluted misery, and now he wanted to share some of that.
"You can go right up, sir."
He hadn't rehearsed what he would say to Lola, he knew it would come out under its own steam and at the right pace; all he had to do was aim it. Leaving the lift he strode along the passage and knocked on the door hard, twice. He tensed himself.
The door clicked and swung open. He saw Lola walking away from him. She was barefoot, wearing a silk robe, her hips swaying like a voluptuous metronome to the pulse of the music pouring from the stereo unit. It was turned up full blast, a recording of Caruso that Larry had heard before, blaring through the bedroom wall at the safe house.
He followed her into the sitting room, slamming the door behind him. Lola stopped in front of the stereo, gazing down at it, swaying, her arms wrapped around her tight little body. "Listen to him," she said without turning. "Listen to the way he reaches the high notes with such softness. It's magic. Pure magic. The decrescendo to
pianissimo
on thefinal B flat—oh, Pavarotti and Domingo can't touch him. . . ."
Larry was furious. He had been ready to explode all over her and she had deliberately pulled this defusing tactic. He leaned forward and hit the stop button on the tape deck. He spun Lola to face him and held up a warning finger to her face.
"You don't call my home. Ever. You hear me?"
For one beat she stared, wide-eyed, then she flew at him. Her left fist cracked on his ear and her right hand delivered a stinging slap to his right cheek. He reeled back.
"If it wasn't for you," she screeched, "he wouldn't be locked up! It's all your fault!"
"I . . ." Larry blinked at her, rubbing his cheek. "I just don't understand you—"
"But I understand you, Larry." The tightness of anger vanished from her face. Her eyes softened as she stepped closer to him. "I know what you came here for." She took his hand. "Well? You want it?"
With her other hand she undid the sash of her robe. It fell open. Larry tried not to stare. Her body was a compact miracle. She stood with her hips thrust forward, the smooth line of her belly drawing his gaze to the compelling darkness at the junction of her thighs.
There was a sound behind the bedroom door. Larry looked at it, looked at Lola, then strode across the room. He twisted the handle and threw open the bedroom door. Charlotte Lampton lay on the bed. She was naked.
"Hi," she said, smiling, her hand coming up from the far side of the bed with a bottle of champagne. "Want a drink?"
Lola turned on the Caruso tape again. She crept up behind Larry and put her arm around his shoulder.
"If you orgasm to Verdi's B-flat aria in
Aida
then you will never believe opera is boring. It will give you . . ."
The rest was a moan as Lola wrapped herself around Larry, her hands sliding over him like small busy animals, her mouth hot with sighs and groans against his ear. Larry tried halfheartedly to extricate himself, his anger completely gone. Embarrassment and discomfort melted toward arousal as Lola fitted herself around him and he watched, over her perfumed hair, as Charlotte stretched
out along the bed, still smiling at him.
f
A few miles away, while Larry's afternoon became a sensual tangle, DCI McKinnes was two thirds of the way into a bad day's interrogation. He was in the grubby, damp-smelling living room of the substitute safe house with Von Joel. They sat at opposite sides of a prosaic square dining table, their fingers flat on its scarred surface, each confronting the other with his stubbornness. The day had gone terribly, and now it was simply disintegrating.
"Don't mess me around," McKinnes snarled, knowing it was a powerless warning, saying it because it was all he could think of. He leaned close across the table, bunching his fists, trying for an air of authority. "So you can't help me with Minton. What about this Rodney Bingham?"
"I don't know him," Von Joel said, his voice flat. "I must have been mistaken."
"I've warned you," McKinnes growled.
"Listen!" Von Joel jerked forward suddenly, his teeth set hard. "I just got out of hospital and you bring me to this shit hole ..." He turned his head aside sharply, addressing the microphone. "I'm a sick man! I gave you all I know!" He sat back a fraction, moistening his lips, glaring at McKinnes. "Anything else, I'll give it to Jackson, not you. That was the deal."
He got up from the table and walked out. McKinnes watched him go, feeling angry, getting angrier. It was one thing to be resisted by a dirty grass of a villain like Von Joel, to be slagged off by him and treated like any old clumsy piece of plod. It was quite another thing to be forced into a corner so tight that you seriously had to
consider compromising. That didn't sit well with McKinnes. Making concessions wasn't his way and to think about it gave him a pain. But realities had to be faced. It wasn't as if he was weighed down with choices.
f
Larry's day had been transformed from a hot ball of rage to a hedonistic mix of sex, good drink, and laughter, all of it enjoyed against a backdrop of lofty music. More surprise entered the picture when he was sent home at six o'clock to put on his best suit. He complied without even thinking of arguing.
Champagne, he discovered, made him an imaginative and plausible liar; by the time he left the house again he could not remember what explanation he had given Susan, but he knew she had accepted it calmly. Lola and Charlotte, as promised, picked him up at the end of the road in a taxi.
"So where are we going, girls?"
They wouldn't tell him, and three guesses would not have been enough. Less than an hour later he was sitting in a good seat at the Royal Opera House, between the girls, his mind not entirely in touch with his body as the music swelled and flowed over him, doing things of such emotional intensity that at one point, to his surprise, he found himself shedding tears. The visit to the Crush Bar was memorable. It seemed like hundreds of people were there, all talking at once, arms working overtime as bottles of wine, trays of glasses, and the occasional ice bucket were passed back above the heads of the crowd. A man standing near Larry told his companion, a big woman in shiny salmon-colored taffeta, that the trouble with opera in general was that it had strayed too far from the simple notion of a play set to music. "It has turned its back, I fear, on the liturgical drama of the Middle Ages, where its true origins lie." Larry could hardly believe real people spoke like that, but there the man was, in three dimensions, the living proof. It would have been a hoot to eavesdrop when he got around to suggesting that he and his date get into bed together.
"Follow me," Lola told Larry, shaking him out of his reverie.
He did his best. She was a fast mover. Being small and lithe she was able to weave in and out of spaces where Larry had to force his way through, smiling and apologizing, followed closely by Charlotte hanging on to the back of his jacket.
"Ah, hang on, Lola," he called out, "you're going the wrong way. Lola ..." He bumped into a woman and apologized. "Lola! The bar . . ."
Hectic as all this was, Larry felt marvelous. The high life suited him, it meshed precisely with who he was. He was only sorry he hadn't discovered it earlier. Lola stopped by a small corner table and turned, brandishing a bottle of Moet. Three glasses lay waiting for them. The bottle had been freshly opened and Lola poured.
"It's not as cold as it should be . . ." She passed over the glasses. "For you, for me . . ."
The trio toasted each other. Larry couldn't stop grinning, knowing what a social bonus it was to be seen with the girls, who looked marvelous. Feeling champagne bubbles burst softly against his lips, he felt blessed. Charlotte's arm was through his, Lola was standing very close, sliding her hand down the back of his trousers. He supposed it was possible to be happier than this, but he couldn't imagine how.
It wasn't imagination he needed, but stamina, because Lola insisted he return to the hotel suite. She was hungry, demanded they all eat, and as Charlotte flicked through the room service menu suggesting more and more desserts and cocktails, Lola began ordering a confusion of ice creams, hamburgers, French fries, strawberries, melons . . .
They were like two kids let loose in a toy store. They giggled and snuggled each other, and then both made Larry choose what he wanted to eat. He was in a hot flush, wondering if he could get up to leave, never mind get anything else up, which seemed the girls' obvious intention. They continued to flirt with him, giving lewd double meanings to the array of sickening desserts that sounded richly orgasmic . . . "banana diced with a thick caramel sauce and succulent fresh cream with brandy ..."
The opera was blasting from the stereo again—Wagner. The room service trolley, laden with enough to feed ten, was set in the center of the room. There was wine and yet more champagne. Larry watched in awe as they picked at french fries between spoonfuls of ice cream and fresh fruit, then stuffed themselves with chocolate fudge, eating with their fingers, sometimes spooning food into each other's mouths. They were like his two boys—well, not quite, but they, too, went crazy at McDonalds.