Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (23 page)

“I don’t think that’d be a problem, no.”

“Well, that’s all right, then. That’s fine. That’s sorted. We know exactly where we stand.”

“Too right we do.”

There’s a short silence.

“In that case, have a nice holiday.”

“Too right I will.”

“Good. Don’t forget, if all else fails, there’s always room service.”

“Fuck off, pig.”

“In Spanish, there’s no answer to that.”

I walk over to the door and open it and manage not to slam it hard enough for all the plasterwork to disintegrate, not to mention the unfinished hotel next door.

Before I leave the hotel and get into the Mercedes I go into the bar and order myself a large vodka. The bar is as empty as before and while I’m drinking my drink I consider the scene in Audrey’s bedroom and what she put on me about our well-laid schemes and there’s no contesting that her facts are right; it could well be that my refusal to give D’Antoni a seeing to could bring to an end a less than beautiful friendship and the prospect of an eventually beautiful retirement. I mean, Gerald and Les, cunts that they are, could very easily have me put down, not that face to face I’d be easy to put down even by a team fielding eleven Norman Hunters, but they could arrange it in their normal roundabout kind of way, like dynamiting my karsi seat or putting piranha fish in my water bed. But, in spite of these considerations, the way I’m feeling right now, it’d be more of a likelihood that I’d get to them before they got to me, and it wouldn’t be indirectly; I’ve always partaken my pleasures directly of the flesh. And for that matter the ironic thing would be that being as I am so pissed off with the fact that D’Antoni ever took the trouble to get himself born and into my life
in the manner in which he has done, I might easily drive back up to the villa and snuff him just on a personal basis.

I order another quick one before I go, and while it’s coming the organist starts up his water torture again; this time it’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon.” I down my drink and try hard not to draw an analogy.

Chapter Twelve

W
ELL
,
SOD HER
, I think to myself. She can do what she bleeding well likes. She can come the old brass bed as much as she wants, I’ve heard it all before, and in circumstances more salubrious than a Mediterranean shoe-box. I done all right on my own so far; if I retired tomorrow on a bachelor basis, I’d still never run the risk of getting chalker’s cough or batterer’s elbow as a result of having to earn a living. And at least I don’t have to contemplate the end of my days shifting Gerald’s dentures round the back of the alarm clock. Jesus, she must think I still draw the curtains to watch television.

Going back, up the hairpins, is still as difficult, if not more so, as it was coming down; with the automatic transmission you can’t rely on the gears as a hedge against deflation; you just have to keep pushing forward and hoping the clutch is all the master race cracks it up to be. The journey also takes twice as long and is twice as aggravating but that aggravation is in keeping with my general state of mind, adding fuel to the flame that Gerald and Les have lit deep inside me.

I finally reach the gap that opens into the dirt-track that leads to the villa and after the slow switchback I rock
over the last hill and glide down towards the villa. The black-out’s still in force; there isn’t a crack of light to be seen. Wally would have got on with Vera Lynn. I stop the Mercedes in front of the glass frontage instead of bothering to put it back in the garage; charades time is over. Except, of course, for Wally, who has locked up the glasswork. So instead of giving the glasswork a kicking I walk into the garage and try the door that obtains into the house. (After all, although it garages a Mercedes, there’s still room for an Austin.) The plasterwork corridors are as silent as I expect them to be, and when I get to the hall, the dribbling fish is still the main source of action, but it’s only an aural sensation, visually everything being pitch black. I try and get my bearings so as I can find the lights and while I’m doing that something whistles about four inches from my left ear and makes a fucking great crash on the floor beside me. The sound shakes the plate glass and when the shuddering dies down there’s the patter of tiny feet up on the landing, coming to a finale with the slamming of a bedroom door. I restrain myself from ripping the fish off its pedestal and carrying it upstairs and ramming it down Wally’s throat, because that can wait until I’ve called up Gerald and Les. What I do do, though, is to call up to Wally:

“It’s me, you stupid bastard.”

That should give him enough to macaroni about until I’ve made the phone call.

I finally find the lights, and when the hall’s illuminated, so’s the source of the crash; Wally’s heaved a Spanish plant pot down from off the balcony and I smile, not because I’ve nearly ended up wearing my brains on the outside, but because on its way down the pot has clipped an even bigger lump out of the fish’s top lip and it provides me with a piece of wish-fulfilment that urges me to get to the phone. I flip the lounge lights on. The lounge is empty. No D’Antoni catching midges. That’s fine with me. I hate being inhibited.

I pick up the phone and go through about twenty minutes of jokes with International exchange until I finally get through to the club and it’s Maurice who picks up the phone.

“Hello, Maurice,” I say to him. “It’s Jack.”

“Jack? I thought you was on your holidays?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“What happened? You get rained off?”

“Something like that. Listen, Gerald and Les about?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why, you want to talk to them?”

No, you cunt, I think. I just want to know if they’re tucked up in bed safely.

“Yes, Maurice. I’d like to talk to them.”

“Hang on. I’ll put you through.”

There’s a silence, then Gerald’s voice comes on the line, full of its usual trust and openness.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Gerald.”

Of course, he knows immediately who it is, but to give himself time he says:

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Jack, Gerald.”

“Jack? Where you calling from, then?”

In the background I can hear Les asking Gerald what’s going on and Gerald clamps his hand over the mouthpiece and relays something back to Les. I take no notice of that and say:

“I’m calling from the villa, aren’t I.”

“Oh. Yeah. How’s things, then?”

“Fine. Things are just fine.”

“That’s fine.”

I leave it to him to take it from there.

“You seen Audrey?” he says.

“Yes, I’ve seen her.”

“She give you that letter?”

“That’s right.”

In the background I can hear Les still asking what’s going on and Gerald clamps his hand over the receiver
and this time I can make out the gist of what he’s saying, which is that he thinks I’m going to be a bit difficult.

“You read it, then?” he comes back to me.

“That’s right.”

Gerald decides on a change of tone for his next delivery.

“Well, that’s great,” he says. “Look, we’re sorry things worked out the way they done, but we been dropped on ourselves good and proper this time, as you can see, and we got no alternative, had we? I mean, if we’d known, we’d have put you in, wouldn’t we, but there was no time, was there? You know the way things happen.”

“I certainly do, Gerald.”

“Yeah,” he says. Les says something in the background and I can hear Gerald tell him to piss off for a moment.

“Well,” Gerald says to me, “how is the geezer?”

“He’s fine.”

“He’s still there, then?”

“Oh yes, as far as I know he is.”

“As far as you know?”

“Yes. I just got in from seeing Audrey, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yes.”

“So I thought I’d just phone first, like.”

Gerald’s tone changes slightly.

“Why did you think that, Jack?” he says.

“Because I just thought I’d tell you and Les to go and fuck each other before I packed my bags and made for the airport.”

“You what?”

“Listen, you cunt, you heard what I said.”

There’s a short silence.

“Yes, I heard.”

There’s more from Les in the background, to the effect that he’s finally got the gist of what’s going on and that he would like to have the receiver to himself for a moment so that he can tell the cunt on the other end of the phone what he thinks about things in general. But Gerald, for the time being, prevails, and it’s his voice that stays on the line.

“Now look, Jack,” he says, “I realise this comes hard to you, but it comes hard to us as well. We was dropped on, and as a result, you was dropped on, seeing as how you are in our employ. See what I mean? And like I say, all things being equal, you
are
in our employ, and what affects us, affects you, so to speak.”

“Listen, Gerald,” I say to him, “let me tell you this. Nobody’s been dropped on in this one except me and not only once but twice. So don’t add bleeding insult to injury. I know you bastards of old. This little lot’s been done and done since the last time Billy Bremner shook hands when he was on the losing side. You, neither of you, never had the bottle to put it to me straight but having said that, you think to yourselves that when I get over here
I
won’t have the bottle not to refuse, that’s what really gets up my nose. Well, you pulled this kind of thing once too often, and the news is this, there is no news. I’m zipping up my flight bag, and the geezer, as far as I’m concerned, he can stay here and take over from Wally when and if Wally should ever happen to snuff it.”

Gerald says: “Now look, Jack—”

“Don’t you give me that. You look. I cleared up enough karsis for you over the last years and I’m not starting clearing up Continental ones.”

Gerald starts to say something but at the other end of the line there’s a clatter and Les comes on.

“Listen, you cunt,” he says, “you work for us so you fucking well do as you’re told.”

“And you know why I work for you, don’t you?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because if I didn’t you wouldn’t be in a position to employ anybody. You’d both be in Durham paying the tame screws to serve you champagne so’s you’d look bigger than the other stiffs. Without me you couldn’t employ anybody to run the three card trick in Oxford Street.”

“You thinking of coming back, Jack?” Les asks me.

“That’s right,” I tell him. “Quick sharp.”

“Only when you do, don’t smile too often, otherwise your ears might fall off.”

“Well, who you going to get to do it for you, Les? You think I’m going to put the razor to myself? Or maybe you’re going to make a virtue of expediency and do it yourself. That’d be a novelty, wouldn’t it?”

There’s a silence from Les. Then he says:

“Where’s Audrey?”

“Now?” I say to him. “By now I should think she’s well set up with the Dagenham Boy Pipers.”

Before he’s got a chance to answer I put the phone down. Then I go upstairs to my bedroom. It’s in darkness so I switch the light on and at that precise moment downstairs the phone begins to ring. I ignore it and Wally, wherever he’s hiding, ignores it too. I begin to pack my gear and the phone carries on ringing. Eventually, outside on the landing, there’s the sound of D’Antoni calling Wally’s name which once again puts Wally in his cleft stick. The phone keeps ringing and D’Antoni keeps on calling and I keep on packing. Eventually the phone stops and I put the last pair of socks in my case and D’Antoni comes into the bedroom, looking the way he always does between drinks.

“The phone,” he says. “You hear that?”

I turn to look at him.

“No,” I say to him. “I thought I was imagining things.”

“Why’d it ring?”

I don’t say anything.

“Who’d be calling here, at this time?”

“Well, I may as well confess. This whole thing was a great ploy cooked up by
This Is Your Life
. The phone was just a signal. You’re this week’s subject. The cameras are on their way up now.”

D’Antoni takes a few steps forward.

“Listen,” he says. “The phone’s supposed to be off.”

“Yeah, the rains, and that.”

“So now it’s ringing.”

I shrug.

“Who’d be calling?” he says.

“Maybe Wally’s old mum to see if he’s eating proper.”

“And maybe it’s the guys, the fellows.”

“They always phone up to see if you’re in before they pay a call, do they?”

“Look, it could just be them, see if anyone’s here to pick up the phone.”

“Like on the movies.”

D’Antoni’s about to say something but he goes pale and says something else.

“I gotta go to the bathroom.”

And that is where he makes for, via the adjoining door in my bedroom, but when he gets to the door he finds it locked, so gulping back the imminent vomit he rushes out onto the landing and attempts to effect his entrance by way of his own bedroom but from what I hear I gather that that door is locked too because D’Antoni rattles the door and fucks and blinds and then there’s the sound of him throwing up and it certainly doesn’t come from inside the bathroom. Then the reason becomes apparent because the bathroom door on my side is opened and out steps Wally; only the minute he sees me standing there he steps back again and slams the door and there’s the sound of the key being turned and straight away there’s some more battering on the other side of D’Antoni’s door.