Jack Carter's Law (20 page)

Finally we get to the part of Upper Street where the turnoff for the Fountain of Youth is. I drive past the establishment and then down to the end of the street and then I back into an alley between the end house and the corner tobacconist. I switch off the engine and look at my watch.

Even with Lesley’s little incident it’s only taken us twenty minutes and Audrey won’t have told Peter where to meet me yet so I say to Lesley, “We’re going to get out of the car now and we’re going to cross the road and walk along the pavement for approximately thirty yards and then we’re going through a door and into a building. Do you understand that? That’s precisely what we’re going to do. We’re not going to throw ourselves under any buses or shin up any drainpipes or scream at any passing law or anything like that. We’re just going to do exactly what I said we’re going to do, aren’t we?”

Naturally she doesn’t answer. I sit there for a minute or two then decide not to tell her again so instead I get out of the car and walk round and open the door on her side and take hold of her hand and pull her out of the car. I keep hold of her hand and we look like urgent lovers as we cross the road and walk towards the Fountain of Youth.

The Fountain of Youth used to be a greengrocer’s shop but the premises have since been done up outside so that the place looks like a cheap Indian restaurant, even down to the bamboo-style neon lettering, but the words and letters form give the game away. F
OUNTAIN OF
Y
OUTH
, the sign says, and in smaller letters: S
AUNA AND
M
ASSAGE.
M
EMBERS
O
NLY
. The large plate-glass windows on either side of the door have been painted the kind of dark green you get on the windows of betting shops or dentists’ surgeries but in the centre of each window is a gaudy transfer of a Hawaiian scene of mountains and surf and hula-hula girls.

I push open the door and a heavy smell of soap and perfume and dust hits me straight away. The door opens into a narrow partition passage with hardboard walls and at the end of the passage there is a desk which prevents the hardboard walls from carrying on down as far as the solid wall at the far end. This is where the clients wait for one of the girls to appear from behind the hardboard so that the membership can be checked out but there is a door in the right-hand partition wall and I push it open and we’re in a sort of reception area with a low formica-topped table in the middle and cheap wooden-armed armchairs ranged round the walls. There are two girls sitting in a couple of chairs. The girls are wearing matching nylon tunic-style coats, the kind of thing the shopgirls probably wore when the place was a greengrocer’s, although then the girls probably wore something more than what the present staff is wearing underneath. One of the girls is reading
Woman’s Own
and the other one is drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette and staring into space. They both look at me, then look at each other without a change of expression between them.

“Where’s Tony?”

“In the office,” says the girl with the coffee.

Keeping hold of Lesley’s hand I go through a doorway which instead of having a door in it is decorated with a curtain made of thin strips of plastic, then down another passage which leads to a door painted with one coat of white undercoat and with lots of finger marks near the door handle and the word P
RIVATE
printed in pencil about halfway up. I open the door.

The office is about the size of a small wardrobe. The walls are pegboarded and there is room for a desk and a filing cabinet and that’s about all. There’s certainly no room for a couple of people of less than average height to lie down on the floor and that is why Tony is sitting on the desk with his trousers round his ankles with his hands under the armpits of one of the girls bouncing her up and down on top of him. The girl is naked except for one of the nylon tunics which is pushed up under her armpits along with Tony’s fat stubby fingers. Her breasts are quite big and Tony is fighting a losing battle to keep his lips round one of her nipples as she bounces up and down. And of course my opening of the door doesn’t make it any easier for him because the girl shrieks as if she’s been stuck in a different place and tries to lift herself off Tony which doesn’t do him much good at all as the only way she can move is backwards and as far as Tony’s concerned that can only be painful, and he expresses as much by bellowing like a donkey and lifting the girl completely off him and dropping her on what little floor space there is, only even more unfortunately for her some of that floor space is occupied by a deep cardboard box full of Tony’s used paper cups from the coffee machine which is where she lands and her shrieks are augmented with the crackling of the cups that make a sound like several penny bangers going off all at once. Tony grabs his injured member and screws his face up as if he’s just sucked on a lemon and the girl tries to struggle up out of the cardboard box. She’s quite a nice-looking kid, especially from the angle I’m looking at her as she thrashes about among the paper cups, but I haven’t time for savouring all that so I grab hold of her wrist and pull until she’s standing up, her face inches away from mine and looking at me as if she’d like to fillet me and spit me out for the cat. She bends down and gives me another treat while she gets her shoes from down the side of the desk then she grabs her tights and pants from off the desk top and rather late in the day holds her tunic together and pushes past me and Lesley and sprints off down the passage. Tony slides off the desk and opens his eyes for a second and then when he sees I’m not alone he jackknifes down to pull his trousers up and does a sack-race jump round to the other side of his desk.

While he’s zipping himself up and tucking in his shirt flaps I say to him, “Sorry, Tony. I thought you only had a cup of tea this time of the afternoon. Didn’t realise you had something with it as well.”

“Bloody Jesus,” he says, easing himself down into his chair. “That’s ruined me for life.”

“No,” I tell him. “Have a massage. You’ll feel right as rain.”

I pull Lesley into the office and close the door behind us. There are two tiny crimson spots on her cheeks.

“Enjoy that one, did you?” I say, giving her the wink.

“Piss off,” she says, shaking her wrist free from my grip, but I notice that the spots go a deeper shade of crimson.

“What the fuck do you want, anyway?” Tony says, taking a swig of cold tea out of a plastic cup. “If you’ve brought a new bird we’ve got more than we need now. Except for the night visiting service, that is. Can’t get enough for that one.”

“Fancy doing a bit of night visiting?” I say, looking at Lesley. She doesn’t answer so I say, “No, she’d be no good for that. She likes it the other way round.”

“So what do you want?” Tony says.

“Without going all round the houses, there might be some law round here in about ten minutes’ time.”

“What?” Tony says, leaping out of his seat and knocking the dregs of his tea over. “Jesus Christ.” He runs round to our side of the desk and pulls open the door and shouts out, “Dawn,” at the top of his voice.

I pull him away from the door and say, “Listen, this is more serious than that. If any law turns up it’s looking for me. They won’t be interested in your ones off the wrist. So this is what I want you to do: Peter the Dutchman’s going to be here any minute and he’s going to be asking for me. Don’t tell him I’ve been here. Just put him in a booth and make sure he stays there, know what I mean? And don’t let him near a phone. Now then, if any law arrives don’t throw a blue fit. Just throw the switch on the neon lighting just in case they’ve got smarter recently. I’ll be driving by every ten minutes or so. If you haven’t switched it off inside half an hour then I’ll be in to see Peter. But make sure he doesn’t leave, right?”

“Yeah, right, right, but what’s going on? Jesus, we’re protected here. I mean, this place is protected.”

“Not any more. Anyway, they’re not bothered about you. But I should clear it as soon as you can.”

“Too bloody right,” he says and opens the door and rushes off down the passage calling for Dawn. I look at Lesley and Lesley looks at me.

“Good business this,” I tell her. “Flat rate’s fair and you get half what you make on top of that and, as they say, all you can eat, if you like to make even more on the side.”

Her hand comes up to give me one on the side of my face but I grab hold of her wrist before she makes contact and I don’t let go again because it’s time to leave. I hurry down the passage dragging her behind me. A client wrapped in a towel comes out of one of the cubicles followed by one of the girls, who’s trying to hand him his clothes.

“I should get dressed in there, sir.”

“But I was recommended to you,” he says. “I mean, I don’t care how much it costs.”

“I’m sorry, you must be mistaken, sir. This is a massage parlor. If you’re not satisfied your money will be refunded in reception.”

We brush past this tableau and through the now empty reception and down the hardboard passage and out. The cold wind cuts down the street and when we get to the car I unlock the passenger door and open it and give her the keys.

She looks at me and I say to her, “No, I’m not barmy. My hands’ll be free this time.”

I get in my side and she gets in her side and puts the key in the ignition.

“No, not yet,” I say to her. “I’ll tell you when.”

She leans back and folds her arms across her chest. From the passenger side I can just see beyond the wall of the corner house, enough for me to have a view of part of the frontage of the Fountain of Youth. I pick the lighter up off the dashboard and take my cigarettes out and offer one to Lesley.

“No, thanks,” she says.

I shrug and light up. A minute or two later she takes out her own cigarettes and when she’s lit up puts the lighter back in her coat pocket.

Five minutes pass by.

Then a two-tone Capri draws up outside the Fountain of Youth. Nothing happens for a minute or two. Then the offside door opens and out gets Peter the Dutchman with his leather maxi coat draped round his shoulders. He looks the building up and down and then strolls in. After the door has closed behind him I tell Lesley to start the car and turn left out of the alley and drive to the opposite end of the street to where the Fountain of Youth is. When we get as far as we can go I tell Lesley to turn right and then to pull in to the curb at the first clear space she sees. And just to make life interesting she does exactly as she’s told for a change.

As we sit there in the lowering dusk I remark on it by saying, “What’s the matter? Rather switch than fight?”

“You what?”

“Forget it. Just my way of saying you seem to be mellowing in your old age.”

“No, I’ve decided to sit back and enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?”

“The moment when you drop right in it. If I’m lucky enough to be around when it happens.”

“You just might be,” I tell her. “But I don’t think you’ll enjoy it.”

While we’re sitting there, the streetlights flick on and almost coincidentally a few snowflakes begin to drift onto the bonnet of the car, then more and more and within a minute or so the street is full of softly falling snow as it drops on the windless air.

“A white Christmas after all,” I say.

Lesley doesn’t answer. Instead she rolls the window down and throws her cigarette out into the quiet street.

I look at my watch and then I say, “Let’s take a little look. Make a U-turn and drive back into the street where the place is and keep going until you come to the first left turn and take it. All right?”

She doesn’t answer but without any hesitation she switches on the ignition and pulls away from the curb. The only thing she does differently to what I told her to do is to make a three-point turn instead of a U.

We turn in to the street where the establishment is and the first thing I notice is that the neon lights are still on. Peter’s Capri is still parked outside the establishment. The only activity in the street is the falling of the snow.

“Remember what I told you about the left turn,” I tell her, but I’ve no need to remind her because she’s already slowing down to go into it. We drive round the block and she parks in exactly the same place we were parked before, the only difference being that we’re facing in the opposite direction.

We sit there in silence for a few minutes and then I say to her, “Going away for Christmas, are you?”

“No, but it sounds as if you are.”

I laugh. “Maybe,” I say. “But not where you think, my darling. If I go away it’ll be to a better crap-hole than this one, I can tell you. Sun, sea and warm sands is what I’ll be going to.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes. That’s all I need. ’Course, I expect you’re off to places like that all the time. When you’re between jobs. Resting’s what they call it, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t answer that. I laugh and take out my
cigarettes and hold out my hand. Eventually she puts her hand in her pocket and takes the lighter out but she doesn’t give it to me until she’s lit up a cigarette for herself.

“So you’re not going up north for Christmas, then?” I ask her, giving her back her lighter.