by Graham Smith
His eyes flick to the floor, and the gun droops an inch, before his attention is snapped back to me and the gun’s aim returns to my face. I guess he got a signal from his buddies.
It’s the second time tonight that a fool has pointed a gun at me. I’d rather there wasn’t a third.
If the guys on the floor are sending the doorman signals, it means they are recovering from the damage I inflicted upon them. With a gun on me, and two pissed-off guys seeking retribution, I don’t much fancy my chances of leaving this office without a serious injury.
As I look at the gun, it’s being traversed up and down my body. One minute it’s pointing at the top of my head, the next my balls. I should be scared that the doorman is picking his spot.
Instead I’m glad he’s so cocky.
As he gets to the top of his range I make a mental note of the position of his arm, and wait while he goes down and up again.
I throw myself under his arm as the gun’s aim passes my nose and is still moving upwards.
By the time his brain has told his finger to squeeze, I’m below the bullet’s path and am driving him against the wall with my shoulder. The gunshot exploding so close to my head is deafening, but now isn’t the time to wiggle a finger in each ear.
I wrap two hands around his gun wrist and twist his arm to the point of dislocation. And beyond.
He screams as he drops the gun.
I keep hold of his wrist and swing him round until his head collides with a wall. He drops in an untidy heap so I turn my attention to the gorilla and the bartender. The gorilla is holding both hands against his gut and there is blood seeping between his fingers, while the bartender is trying to pull his leg free from underneath the gorilla.
I guess the shot fired by the doorman has hit the gorilla.
I retrieve the gun and aim it in the general direction of the bartender as I pick up my sharpening steel. My next move is to slam the steel against the knees of the doorman, before I use it to knock the gorilla out cold.
The bartender eyes me with fear as I approach him. He’s still trapped by the gorilla’s bulk as I use the sharpening steel to smash his right elbow.
I sit myself back in the office chair and wait for his groaning to subside. When it turns into pleas for mercy, I hold a finger to my lips.
He shushes.
‘Where can I find The King?’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t tell you that. It’s more than my life is worth.’
I could point out that his life isn’t worth anything to me, but I don’t think he’d appreciate my honesty.
‘I’ll only ask you nicely once more. Where can I find The King?’
He doesn’t answer. There’s defiance in his eyes.
I walk the two steps towards him, place a boot on his left wrist and open my backpack. The chef’s blowtorch fits nicely in my hand.
I press the button and a blue flame springs from its nozzle. I show it to the bartender, see the terror in his eyes, and take a sweeping pass of his fingertips.
He yelps, but otherwise remains silent.
I bend to take another sweep and his hand curls into a fist. Improvising has never been an issue for me, so I hold the flame against his knuckles for the count of three. I can see his skin blistering as the air fills with the smell of burnt pork.
He howls and tries to wriggle free, but my boot holds him in place.
I hold the unlit blowtorch in front of one of his eyes. ‘Where can I find The King?’
‘I … I … I don’t know. If I need him I have a number to call.’
He gives me the number.
I write it down on a piece of paper that gets stuffed in my pocket, and take a roll of duct tape from my backpack. Tying people up with duct tape might be an overused cliché, but hey, it works.
Five minutes later I have the three of them tied up and I’m leaving the office. Had they not started throwing punches around, and refused to answer my questions, they would be in a lot less pain. They struck first so I feel no guilt about their various agonies.
I now have two guns stuffed into the small of my back. I’ve checked the new one and it has eight bullets in its cartridge. Fifteen bullets, when you’re as inexperienced with guns as I am, isn’t a lot, but it’s eight more than I had. If things go the way I’ve planned, I won’t be getting myself into any gunfights.
Rather than let any of the staff release the bound men and alert The King, I find one of the roving doormen and tell him that The King is coming for an urgent meeting, and that he's to close the place for the night and send all the staff home. He tries to resist me giving him orders, but I drop the wrong kind of name and he does as I bid.
It takes him twenty minutes to get the doors locked, but finally the last member of staff leaves.
I make sure the club is secure and let myself out of a side door.
61
I take a zig-zag route away from The Elite Club until I find myself on a busy street. There’s a club across the road where throngs of people are hanging outside, chatting and smoking.
The scene is one I see three nights a week while tending door at The Joshua Tree: Casperton’s rock bar, where even the music has to be twenty-one or older.
The club will be noisy and filled with laughter, arguments and people shouting into their friends’ ears to be heard over the music.
I need somewhere quieter, but not so quiet that my conversation is overheard.
I look along the street and see a collection of bars. I head towards them in the hope of finding one with a working payphone.
Two girls are walking towards me; one is carrying her shoes, while the other totters on impossibly high heels. They see me walking their way and cut their giggling.
While it’s not my intention to frighten innocents, I guess my scars are doing their job. I also figure that my recent fight, on top of all the other events, has left me looking a lot grimmer than usual.
I reach the row of bars and look for the least classy. It’ll be the quietest one, devoid of shrieking laughter and booming music.
When I enter, I see the kind of place that’s been around for decades – one that uses its original features to give it character. The problem is, this bar has all the character of a speakeasy that’s fallen silent.
The fittings may tell of a bygone age, but they also tell of a bygone cleaner. Every piece of chrome or brass is pitted with rust spots and discolouration. The furniture is the uniform brown of dirt accumulated by a century of use, and there’s no way I would drink from any of the glasses behind the bar.
I order a bottle of soda from a bartender, who appears old enough to have been Methuselah’s headmaster, and ask if they have a payphone.
He puts my drink on the counter without a napkin, and points to a cubbyhole. ‘Phone’s in there. Don’t know if it still works. It’s been a while since it was last used.’
I wipe the rim of my soda bottle as I walk to the cubbyhole.
The phone has a dial-tone when I lift the handset, so I feed a handful of coins into it and punch Alfonse’s number into the keypad.
Sure, I could have used my new cell to call him, but this phone is anonymous, and therefore won’t leave a trail pointing to him should the worst happen to me.
Alfonse picks up on the second ring.
I spend two minutes talking to him and hang up.
To avoid suspicion from the biblical headmaster, or the bar’s four patrons, I finish my soda and head out to the street.
There’s a bar across the street that looks like the one I’ve just left, so I head over there to kill the ten minutes Alfonse has told me to wait before calling him back.
This bar is only half as old as the other one and, when I check, on a fake trip to the bathroom, the payphone has a dial tone.
62
‘You’re nothing but a waste of space. I can’t believe I once loved you. Do you hear me, Cameron? You’re a waste of space. A complete and utter bawbag, whose only achievement in life is the inflict
ion of misery upon those foolish enough to love him.’
Cameron gets a pang of nostalgia at Ivy’s use of the Glaswegian insult, bawbag. Her abusive rants have lasted so long he’s now immune to them.
If he cared about her opinion of him, he’d have been wounded by her words, but he’d lost the few feelings he’d had for her a long time ago. Now she’s nothing more than a distant echo, shouting back at him from the cavern of history.
He’d thought about telling her that he wasn’t listening, but decided against it. Knowing her, she’d just raise her voice.
A part of him feels sorry for her. Not for the damage his actions have wrought; more for the years she’s spent accumulating bitterness. Emotions like that eat into happiness the way a starving lion gorges on a fresh kill.
Just two days after losing the fortune that would have funded his retirement, he’s cast aside any thoughts of allocating blame for his misfortune, and is looking forward rather than back.
‘You remember when your mother contacted me saying you wanted a divorce? That was the day I found out what you really were. She cried on the phone to me that day. Have you any idea how often we pictured your body being found somewhere? How many times we speculated that you’d been killed, or committed suicide? Were you even aware that your mother aged twenty years in the two years it took for you to get in touch?’
Before he can stop himself, Cameron rises from the bed and bangs on the door. ‘That’s enough, Ivy.’
Cameron hears a throaty chuckle. ‘So that’s your weak spot is it? Your mother? Not your kids. Not your wives. Your mother. You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being. The thought that I ever let you touch me makes my skin crawl. You broke my heart and those of my kids. Not content with breaking three hearts, you did the same with your other wife and kids, and yet, big tough guy that you are, you’re only bothered about your mammy.’
‘You’ve said enough, Ivy. Leave my mother out of this.’
‘Why, what you going to do? I saw the pain of worry age her. I remember the haunted expression she took on after you’d scarpered. She’s a good woman who loved the bawbag that was her son. You’ve never cared about your children, but you listen to me: just like your mother, I love my children. I’m proud of them and their moral fibre. They are fine, upstanding citizens who’ve thrown off the grief of being abandoned by a worthless bag of skin that’s not fit to say the word father, let alone behave like one.’
‘You’re full of pish, Ivy. You don’t know your boy as well as you think.’ Cameron slams the heel of his palm against the door. ‘Do you hear me? You have no idea what Jake is doing now, but let me tell you, there’s nothing about murder that speaks of moral fibre.’
‘What do you mean murder? What does homicide have to do with anything?’
The American word sits odd in Cameron’s ears when delivered in a thick Glaswegian brogue. He gives it a moment’s thought and remembers how Ivy had always tried to fit in. Her using the local terminology would be natural for someone who’d been out here as long as she had.
‘Jake hasn’t gone back to New York to speak to the police about what happened. He’s gone back to kill the person who shot his girlfriend. He’s going to either get himself killed, or arrested and jailed for murder. I said my goodbyes to him a long time ago, Ivy. It’s about time you got ready to say yours.’
As Cameron lies back on the bed he can hear Ivy’s sobbing recede as she walks away. He lays his head on the pillow and closes his eyes. A part of him knows he should feel cruel for shattering her illusion of Jake. Another, larger part, wishes he’d thought of it sooner as it has shut Ivy up and he can now get some peace to sleep.
63
I make the second call to Alfonse and listen as he gives me a location for Kingston. He’s as succinct as ever with his report, but I feel there’s something nagging at him. He gets to the point and tells me that Mother has been in touch with him, demanding that he tells her where I am, and that he’s to tell me “to return home immediately before I do something stupid”.
I thank him for his help and end the call. He knows me well enough to know I won’t go running just because Mother has told me to come home.
Alfonse has yet to share his opinion on what I’m planning to do. The fact he has held back from telling me, lets me know he at least agrees on some level that a biblical eye-for-an-eye justice should be delivered, rather than one meted out by a court.
It’s a big step, planning to kill someone, and the aiding and abetting of a planned assassination will incur stiff penalties for him should I get caught or be killed. This is why I’m doing everything I can to isolate his involvement from my activities.
His digital searches will be registered on his computer, but he’s more than smart enough to erase them in case anyone should come looking for him as my accomplice.
That mother has found out about my mission is disconcerting to say the least. While she and I may have a tumultuous relationship, we still love and respect one another.
It shouldn’t surprise me that Cameron has told her what my plans are. He’s possessed by a self-interest that makes Mother’s narcissism seem charitable. Plus, I’m confident that she will have relished giving him a piece of her mind.
Thirty years is a long time to store hate, and there are few things Mother likes better than delivering a well-deserved bollocking.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Mother will have heaped abuse and derision on him from first light until last. Mother may well be in her sixth decade, but she’s still got enough fight in her to see her take on far greater targets than Cameron.
In my mind’s eye I can picture them either side of the door. Her, furious and vitriolic as she lambasts him for all his failings; him, aghast and repentant at the hurt he’s caused.
It’s an idea that gives me the greatest of pleasure. There are few people in this world that I hate, but my father tops the list. A day or two having Mother give him a good old-fashioned Glasgow slagging is the least he deserves.
I know my mother though. She’ll go too far. She always does.
Cameron telling her that I’m planning to kill is a sure-fire indicator that she’s already crossed his red line. Alfonse telling me that Mother has just called him advises me that the line has only been crossed in the last few minutes.
It’s a worry I have to shelve. I can’t be thinking about what Mother will say, when I’m storming The King’s castle.
64
The cab drops me a quarter mile from Olly Kingston’s house as I don’t want any witnesses.
His house is a good one. It sits on a good street, in a good neighbourhood. It’s almost a shame I plan to do bad things in it.
I scout the house from the road at first. It has a seven-foot wall – like most of the houses in the street. There’s also a pair of wrought iron, ornamental gates that look strong enough to resist anything less than a bulldozer. A plaque on the wall bears the name of the house.
It isn’t Graceland, so I decide that The King has delusions of grandeur, rather than a love of a certain rock and roll star.
I’d jump up and take a peek over the wall were it not for a fear that the concrete coping stone was layered with broken glass.
A walk past the gates shows the house to be ablaze with lights and the drive littered with expensive cars. There’s a little gatehouse to the right of the opening and I can see a pair of feet and a screen.
A party is not what I was expecting, and the presence of a goon at the gate makes entry a little bit tougher. The gates can be climbed in a matter of seconds, but having someone shouting the alarm will not simplify things.
I dare say I could try and bluff my way in as a late guest, or as an employee of someone attending the party, but those paths are filled with hazards. There’s no telling whether the party is for legitimate or illegal friends and, either way, if I was escorted into the house and the party, I’d be recognised as a stranger as soon as they saw me.
The scar on my face will go
against me, should it be a legitimate party, and I’m confident there will be guns pointed at me if The King and his associates have learned what happened at The Elite Club.
I continue my walk until I’m two houses along from The King’s. Neither of his neighbours, nor the houses opposite, have lights on – except external ones.
This gives me hope that the party is a legitimate one, and that his neighbours are on the guest list.
I double back to his nearest neighbour’s house, and peer through their gate. The house looks to be asleep, so I ignore the pain in my ribs from the gorilla’s punch and clamber up the wrought iron framework of the gate. When I reach the top I cast my eyes towards Kingston’s house.
It’s not the house I’m looking at, but the wall surrounding his garden. There’s no glint of reflected light from any glass embedded into the top of the wall. I tell myself to get with the times and stop looking for things that went out of fashion thirty years ago. Any security arrangements Kingston has will be modern ones, backed up by gun-toting henchmen.
I’m listening for the bark of dogs, or the howl of sirens that have been triggered by a hidden alarm. Hearing neither, I creep my way through the bushes until I’m halfway along the wall between this house and Kingston’s.
My next move is to get on the porch and climb slowly onto the veranda rail. As I straighten myself, my eyes are watching for anyone looking out of a window at Kingston’s house.
There’s nothing to see but, until the party reduces itself to the last few guests, I can’t begin to think about crossing the wall.
I climb down and prepare myself for a wait, as I listen for the sounds of people leaving.
As I wait, I put myself through a series of stretches so I’m as supple as a man my age can be. A pulled muscle will almost certainly make the difference between life and death.
I marvel at how steady my hands are, and how controlled my breathing is. I should be a shaking mess, fighting my emotions and the adrenaline that’s pumping its way around my body, but I’m not. The only thing I’m afraid of tonight, is failure.
