by Stuart David
He’d got a bit of a fright along the way. Still, it was his own fucking fault. He’d kept moaning all the way along that straight road about how straight it was. And then he’d started in on me.
‘I fucking wish you could drive, Peacock,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with you, man? Why can’t you drive?’
‘Oh, I can drive,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got a licence, but I can drive.’
I told him I’d take over next time we stopped if he wanted, but he said I couldn’t take over if I didn’t have a licence. He was driving me fucking crazy, though—driving me mental with his constant moaning. He was starting to sound like a fucking woman. So at the next stop I grabbed the keys from him at the table, and I put them in my pocket.
‘Come on, Peacock,’ he said. ‘Give them back. You can’t drive here without a licence. We’ll both end up in prison.’
But I didn’t answer him. He reached over the table a couple of times while we ate, and tried to grab at my pocket—but I knocked him away.
‘Will you stop moaning about driving if I give you them back?’ I asked him.
‘I’ll stop,’ he said.
‘Alright. Then I’ll give them back.’
‘Thanks, Peacock,’ he said. ‘All I’ve been saying is it’d be easier if we could both drive. It’s a hard fucking gig doing this all on your own.’
I sighed.
‘Bob…’ I said
‘What?’
‘You’re fucking moaning again. I told you, I’m going to help you out. Just sit back and relax, son. Enjoy your lunch.’
I was already in the driving seat when he got outside, but he wouldn’t get in.
‘Hurry up,’ I told him. ‘I’ll fucking leave you here.’
‘Get out, Peacock,’ he shouted. ‘Give me the fucking keys. You can’t…’
So I started driving away. Not too fast, just enough to let him run after me.
It was a fucking easy car to drive. No gears. Nothing. I kept going for a bit, with him still running behind me, then I stopped and let him catch up.
‘Are you getting in?’ I asked him.
‘That’s enough, Peacock,’ he said. ‘Let me drive now.’
I moved off again, faster this time. And when I looked in the mirror I could see him standing with his hands in the air, defeated.
‘Shit,’ he said, as he climbed in.
But I can drive. I can drive fine. I just haven’t passed the test, and a child could have driven this car. Stop and go—that’s all there was to it. And once you got up to a certain speed you just hit the cruise thing and it drove itself. All I had to do was steer. I couldn’t work out what all his complaining had been about.
I was making a lot better time than he’d made too. He’d spent most of the journey sitting around seventy, seventy-five. But I had us up to ninety in no time. I turned that cruise thing on around ninety-five, and weaved us in and out of all the cars that were crawling along. I moved from lane to lane.
His fucking moaning got to be more unbearable than it had been when he’d been driving though. And at least when he’d been driving his moaning hadn’t been all panicky too. Every time I looked round at him he looked paler than the time before, and there were times when he even stooped to letting out a wee squeal, when I moved us from one lane to another to pass the next fucking kerb-crawler.
‘Enough, Peacock,’ he shouted a couple of times. ‘Enough.’
You’d have thought he was on the fucking waltzers, and he kept saying if we passed a cop car we’d be finished. But what the fuck would a cop car be doing out there in the middle of nowhere. Nothing, that’s what.
But I decided in the end to give it up anyway, cause his moaning was worse than when he drove—so I wasn’t achieving anything. And it was just getting me agitated.
I saw a sign for more petrol stations and fast food places and decided to stop there. The road swung round on a long bend towards the exit, and I followed it along. I suppose I didn’t slow down enough for it though, cause the back wheels moved out from underneath us and the car whipped round. That took us over onto the other side of the road and across the lanes there, and we came to a stop at the top of the embankment, but it was alright. The road was empty coming that way, and it was fine.
We’d come to a neat fucking stop too, facing the opposite way from the way we’d been going.
‘You fucking maniac,’ Bob started shouting. ‘You’re fucking insane, Peacock. Get out of the car. Get out. Get into this fucking seat now.’
He went pretty mental. I laughed a bit and got out. He started pushing me about at the top of the embankment.
‘You almost fucking killed us,’ he shouted. ‘You crazy fucking bastard.’
‘Calm down,’ I told him, but he kept pushing me. Then he tripped over something and knocked his full weight onto me, and the two of us took a tumble down the embankment into a field.
‘For fuck sake,’ I shouted. ‘Get a grip on yourself, son.’
I tried dragging him back up to the road, but he was throwing this crazy wee tantrum, and he kept kicking and pulling. Then he started tumbling all the way back down the embankment and into the field again.
I climbed up to the top and looked down at him. He was just lying there on his back with his arms and legs out in the shape of a star.
‘Come on,’ I shouted at him. ‘Get up.’
He didn’t answer for a bit and then, still without moving, still lying on his back, he let out pretty much the loudest shout I’d ever heard. It seemed to echo all through the place. Just one word-
‘Bastard.’
So I got him those few drinks after he’d driven us to Butte, just to help calm him down. And some good did come out of the whole thing. He didn’t moan once about having to drive the next day, or about me not being able to drive. He was as bright as a button, and we had a good time.
There was plenty to see too.
Driving out of Butte there was an enormous statue of the virgin Mary up on the mountain. It was a fucking spectacular sight. But nothing compared to the landscape we drove through later.
There was one place where we stopped at a viewpoint, and it was fucking incredible. It looked down on an enormous gorge through the desert, with a river running through it—and we were up high in the brown rocks—and higher up still there were these fucking mental sculptures of cowboys on horses. It was fucking bizarre.
We drove through more desert, and then suddenly we were in a landscape that looked like fucking Austria—all green and trees and mountains. I was fucking glad not to be driving—there was too much to look at.
So that was a good day, and it was another long day too. We got to Portland around midnight, five fucking days after we’d set out. Admittedly we hadn’t got anywhere on the first day, but it was a long fucking time to sit in a car, and I was fucking glad to be there.
‘Well,’ Bob said, as we went up to our rooms, ‘this is the place, Peacock. This is where it’s going to happen. That was one long fucking trip.’
I nodded.
He shook his head.
‘You done well,’ I told him.
‘I’m fucking drained,’ he said.
‘You’ll be alright,’ I told him. ‘What happens tomorrow?’
‘I phone the guy who knows the guy out here, and I’ll find out when we can go and meet him.’
‘Sounds good,’ I said.
The lift stopped on our floor.
‘Get some rest, wee man,’ I told him, and I went to find my own room. Then I wondered about what I’d just said. ‘Sounds good’? Fuck me, I thought. I’ve been in this country too long. Next thing I know I’ll have a fucking gun.
Chapter 11
‘Fucking freedom,’ Bob said, as we walked out of the hotel the next morning. And he raised his middle finger at our car parked on the street.
It did feel good just to be walking around, and to know we weren’t going to have to spend the whole day sitting down again.
We found a pla
ce for breakfast, and Bob told me about the phone call he’d made to his guy.
‘It’s all happening,’ he said. ‘He kept going on about where the fuck had we been for the last two days. He thought we’d be here sooner. But it’s cool. The guy here didn’t want us to come along to his place till today anyway, so I don’t know what the fuck all the fuss was about.’
‘Is it far from here?’
‘Not too far. I’ve got directions. P.O. productions. We’ve to go there about four.’
‘Four? What the fuck are we going to do till then?’
‘I don’t know. Just see the place. Eat some good food instead of that roadside garbage we’ve been eating all week. Have a few drinks…’
As it turned out, we leant more towards the drinks idea than the good food one. And we got ourselves into a wee spot of trouble. Not too much, mind you—just a spot. And that was before we’d even had a drink.
When we’d finished breakfast we were walking around a bit, trying to work out what to do, and Bob went across to a shop to buy some cigarettes. I didn’t cross over with him, just stayed where I was, and I saw two guys starting to follow him.
You can usually tell when someone’s thinking about doing some mugging, but these guys weren’t thinking about that. They were considering his potential for something else entirely.
‘Watch your arse, Bob,’ I shouted, and that upset them. They swung around on me then.
‘I’m sorry, guy,’ one of them said, all flapping wrists and perfume. ‘We didn’t know he was taken, honey.’
‘Boy is you protective,’ the other one said.
‘But that’s nice,’ the first one interrupted. ‘I like that. A good, strong man.’
And he reached out a hand to touch the top of my arm. I knocked it away.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I asked him.
‘Oh boy, they is close,’ the second one said.
‘Very close,’ the first one agreed. ‘Where are you from, honey? That’s a lovely accent you have.’
I’ll be honest with you here—I started to wish they had been muggers. I had no fucking idea how to handle the situation. With muggers it would have been easy, you don’t even have to think about it. You just get stuck right in—then you take everything off them that they’ve taken from other people. I didn’t even know what these guys were doing.
Luckily Bob came out of the shop then, and he crossed back over.
He shook his head at me.
‘Listen, guys,’ he said. ‘This is Peacock. Peacock Johnson. He’s from Scotland. He’s over here travelling and I’m showing him around. My name’s Bob.’
He shook hands with them, then said he apologized for my behaviour.
‘This is his first time here,’ he said.
Fuck knows how, but that seemed to work. In a way.
‘That’s a beautiful name, honey,’ the first one said to me. ‘Well, you enjoy your stay here.’
‘And both of you enjoy each other,’ the second one said.
Then they were leaving, waving at us both as they went.
‘You stupid fuck,’ Bob whispered at me, as he waved back to them.
‘What?’
‘You can’t shout shit like that, Peacock.’
‘But it didn’t look good,’ I told him.
‘I know. But how good did it look after you shouted?’
‘Worse.’
‘Alright.’
I saw what he meant.
‘Don’t try anything like that again, Peacock,’ he said, and I assured him I wouldn’t. Then we went off to find somewhere we could get a drink and forget about it.
So we’d had a few by the time we went off to meet our guy, but we were alright. We got a taxi there, in case we got lost—and it dropped us at an entrance with the names of a few companies by the door.
‘There it is,’ Bob said, pointing. ‘P.O. Productions. Second Floor.’
P.O. Productions was written in big letters—and below it, in smaller ones, were the words ‘Portland, Oregon Productions.’
‘Fucking imaginative,’ I muttered, and off we went to the lift.
I wasn’t sure if stairs existed in America, but I certainly hadn’t seen any in the time I’d been there.
When we found the place a fucked up looking guy answered the door, and I hoped he wasn’t ours.
‘We’re looking for Ray Stewart,’ Bob told him, and he turned round. I started breathing more easily when he shouted to someone else.
He brought us into an office where you could hardly move for boxes on the floor. Stacked boxes, scattered boxes—and then he pointed us to another door, and we knocked on that.
‘Come in,’ the voice shouted, and I assumed that was Ray. And when we got inside Ray didn’t look too fucked up at all.
‘Hi guys,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’
Bob leant forward to shake his hand.
‘I’m Bob,’ he said. ‘This is Peacock.’
Ray’s face lit up.
‘My music men,’ he said. ‘How are you both?’
‘Good,’ Bob said. ‘Good.’
‘Aye, fine son.’
‘Excellent. Excellent…Frank!’ he shouted, and the fucked up guy put his head round the door.
‘Get us some coffees, would you? Do you guys want some coffee? I need some coffee. Okay, let me see here.’
He looked around for something in a drawer then tidied more things off his desk.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘So how was the trip? That was a long way you guys came.’
‘It wasn’t too bad,’ Bob told him. ‘We made it.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘We got here, son.’
‘I’m glad you did. Very glad. Ah, here’s the coffee. Excellent. So—Michael speaks very highly of you both. I’m looking forward to this, I really am.’
‘So are we,’ Bob said, and I wondered who the fuck Michael was, to be speaking so highly of me. I assumed he must be Bob’s guy.
‘I imagine he’s filled you in on what I do,’ Ray said. ‘I’ve got all the equipment ready and waiting. Everything’s just about set.’
‘And you know what we’ve got planned?’ Bob asked.
‘Just whatever you guys want to do,’ Ray said. ‘I’m totally open. I trust you guys entirely.’
He took a big drink from his coffee and then started scribbling down on a piece of paper.
‘Here’s the address of the place,’ he said while he wrote. ‘And I’ll put some directions on here too, so you guys can find it alright.’
When he was finished he pushed it across the table to us.
‘So I’ll see you guys there around eight,’ he said. ‘Does that sound good?’
‘It sounds great, pal,’ I told him—and then the fucked up guy showed us out.
Chapter 12
We drank a bit more, waiting to go along to the place at eight, but we did manage to fit some of the good food in this time too. And it was fucking great food—in a restaurant not far from the hotel. It helped soak up some of the drink, and we weren’t too bad by the time we got to the place.
It seemed the place was mainly a club, but when we asked for Ray someone took us through to the back, and Ray was hurrying about in there.
‘Ah, guys—guys…’ he said, and he went into a drawer again—then he came towards us and put a hand on my back.
‘Okay, come with me,’ he said, and took us back the way we had come.
As we walked he held out an envelope and asked who wanted to take it. He held it out first to Bob, then to me—then he shrugged and gave it to Bob.
We were back into the club by then, and he took us over to a corner.
‘Here’s all the equipment,’ he said. ‘Everything’s here. Just so long as you guys have the records.’
He laughed, and patted Bob on the back.
‘You guys settle in here,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get a few last-minute things ready, and then I’ll be back.’ He pointed at the envelope. ‘That’s how you wa
nted it, right? Half now and half later?’
Then he fucked off.
I frowned at Bob and Bob frowned at me.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I asked him.
He shrugged and I took it from him.
I opened it.
‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Look at that, Bob.’
It was full of fucking money. A lot of money.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Bob said, and he started counting it. Then he stopped—he stopped suddenly—and he pointed at something behind me.
‘Crap…’ he said.
He was pointing at a poster on the wall, and on the poster it said,
‘Evil Bob and Peacock Johnson—International DJs. Club Mondo. March 14th—8.30pm till late.’
‘How come your name’s before mine?’ I asked him.
‘What?’ he shouted. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Peacock. What are we going to do?’
‘How much is in the envelope?’ I asked him, and he started counting it again. Then he looked up.
‘A thousand dollars,’ he whispered.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Go?’
I nodded.
‘Put it in your pocket and we’ll just walk out of here. Then we’ll go and fucking kill that contact of yours.’
He folded up the envelope.
‘Hang on though,’ I said, and I thought for a bit. ‘If we actually do this—didn’t he say ‘Half now, half later’? That’s another grand…’
‘Do it? How the fuck are we going to manage that?’
‘How hard can it be?’
‘Hard. We haven’t got any fucking records, Peacock. I liked your first plan better. Let’s just get out of here.’
I stopped him.
‘There’s a record shop right across the road,’ I told him. ‘I saw it on the way in. A second-hand place. Go and get some records and I’ll figure out how all this stuff works.’
‘This is madness, Peacock,’ he said. ‘Let’s just fucking go.’
‘It’s another grand,’ I told him. ‘Go and buy some fucking records.’
