Alarm Call ob-8

by Quintin Jardine

  I thought about that one for a bit. ‘Dad,’ I told him, when I’d worked out the answer, ‘I might know that you’re not perfect, but nobody else does. As far as Susie’s concerned, when Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, he looked just like Mac the Dentist.’

  He chuckled. ‘I never did tell you about that burning bush I saw on the way home from the pub one night, did I? Okay, son, I’ll do it; I won’t promise that it’ll do any good, but I’ll do it. Oh, aye, and by the way, your sister’s got engaged. The guy even came and asked me if it was all right. He’s not so bad after all; a crap golfer, but not so bad. Goodnight.’

  Hey, I thought, a piece of good news.

  I went back into the laptop and read Ellie’s message. It confirmed formally what my father had just told me, and what she’d let slip a week before. I sent her a quick

  Congratulations, I couldn’t be more pleased for you.

  then looked at Jonny’s. He told me the same story, then asked,

  What do you think of the law as a career, Uncle Oz? Harvey seems to be pretty well fixed.

  I replied,

  I know two sorts of lawyers, the boring ones and those who overcome the turgidity of their profession and remain interesting, amusing human beings. If you believe you can be the latter, go for it.

  I think Jonny sees me as a Moses substitute as well. I hoped that after I’d climbed out from under the ruins I found myself buried in he’d feel the same way.

  I looked at the box again, in case there was another message from Susie. There wasn’t. I clicked a button and deleted everything, then switched off once more.

  I checked my watch; it was coming up for two. I left Prim with the rest of the champagne, told her to order whatever lunch she wanted from Room Service, then went in search of the big man’s suite.

  As he’d said, it was just along the corridor. I knocked on the door and, as always, when it opened everything went dark. Everett Davis is so big he blocks the light from nearly every doorway he approaches. I still laugh when I remember the first time he came to see me in Glasgow; I thought there had been an unscheduled eclipse.

  Since those days Daze, to give him his ring name, had gone on to become one of the biggest names in sports entertainment, as professional wrestling is called now for very good US tax reasons. He was everything in the game, performer, talent spotter, promoter and president of a company that he had founded and built to the point at which it was quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.

  As I stepped into his suite I had entered the presence of a genuine dollar billionaire.

  ‘It’s great to see you, Oz,’ he began. ‘I want you to know how much I appreciate your being here. It could be the difference between success and failure for this movie.’

  I looked up at him; way up. ‘Come on, man, failure’s never an option for you. I might make you a few more dollars; that’s what you mean, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s just say I’ll appreciate having your name on the marquee when we premiere.’

  ‘Is Diane here?’ I asked.

  ‘No, she’s in Jersey with the family.’ Everett’s kids are around the same age as mine. ‘Before we go in there,’ he said quietly, ‘gimme a rundown on your ex’s problems.’ I gave him the quick, five-minute version, leaving out all the aggravation between me and Susie.

  ‘This guy’s in Vegas, you reckon?’ he asked, when I was finished.

  ‘So we believe.’

  His eyes grew hard; you wouldn’t want to be the cause of him looking like that. ‘If you need any help to round him up, I’ve got a small army here.’

  ‘Man, you’re a large army in your own right. Thanks for the offer; I’ll bear it in mind if I need help, but I’m looking forward to crucifying this guy myself.’

  He led me into the suite; it wasn’t as big as mine. The table was set for lunch, four places, and the other two were occupied by my friend Liam Matthews, who had the lead role in Serious Impact. . although he’d be billed below me … and the director, Santiago Temple. I’d never met him but I recognised him from the pages of Empire magazine. A couple of waiters were hovering in the background, ready to go to work.

  ‘Hi, slugger,’ said Liam, in his light Irish accent. He looked at my patched-up ear. ‘What the hell did that?’

  ‘A soft-nosed point three eight bullet, according to what was in the rest of the chamber. That’s what you get when you’re an all-action movie star, sunshine.’

  ‘On this movie, when I shoot you, I’ll be using blanks, I promise.’

  ‘I may not take you on trust.’ Liam and I weren’t always pals. In fact, the first time we met I took a punch at him for chatting up my wife; I was married to Jan then.

  ‘I will check every round personally,’ said Temple.

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve never met you before,’ I told him. ‘You may not know the difference between a dummy and the real thing. I think I’d rather the armourer did it.’ I was grinning when I said it, but I wasn’t kidding. There have been accidents in the past: take a look at the end of the short career of Brandon Lee.

  He glanced at the plaster. ‘What’s under that?’ he asked me.

  ‘Some very neat stitching; makeup should be able to hide it, if you’re worried.’

  ‘As it happens, I’m not. The rescheduling will give you time to recover.’

  I looked at Everett as we took our seats and the waiters moved in. ‘Come again?’

  He smiled. ‘Something I’ve been holding out on you. You’ll have noted that the majority of your scenes involve Jerry.’ I had; I was to play the smooth bad guy, and Jerry Gradi was to play my muscle. ‘Well, we’ve had a little problem.’ Jerry’s nearly as big as Everett; I couldn’t imagine any of his problems being little, but I was wrong. ‘He’s caught chickenpox from his little boy,’ said Daze with a huge smile, ‘and he’s been quarantined.’

  I had to grin too, at the thought of the mighty Behemoth being flattened by a few spots.

  ‘He’ll be out of action for another week,’ Everett went on. ‘However, Santiago’s managed to move things around. If it’s okay with you, we’ll switch your scenes with Liam to this week and compress your action with Jerry into the week following, but with the best will in the world, we can’t get you into action before Wednesday, at the earliest, and maybe even Thursday.’

  I found myself wondering whether that would give me time to fly home to see Susie, but I realised pretty quickly that if I did I’d be lucky to be able to spend more than half an hour with her, and that wouldn’t be nearly enough. Still, hopefully it would give me a window to get Prim’s thing done.

  ‘It’s okay with me,’ I said.

  That was the only piece of business we had to do, and it was over in a couple of seconds. The main purpose of the get-together was to give me a chance to get to know Santiago, or Santi, as he insisted I call him. He was an earnest young guy, still in his twenties; he’d done fewer movies than I had, and he’d only directed two of them. However, I knew that Everett wouldn’t have hired him if he’d had any doubts about his ability to deliver a good product, so I felt comfortable with him from the start.

  We spent the next couple of hours just catching up. Liam and Everett spent a good chunk of the time pulling my chain about the San Francisco incident. After all, they were the professional athletes, and I was supposed to be the dilettante, the pretender; they thought the whole thing was a great laugh.

  Eventually, though, the joke was played out and so were the black grapes and Stilton. Santi gave me a copy of the revised shooting schedule, and I promised to look in on the set before Wednesday to get to know the rest of the cast and the key crew members. I’d enjoyed the break, but the overriding problems hadn’t gone away. For all I knew, Susie might have called me while I was away, or sent me another e-mail, or Prim might have had a call from Wallinger about the completion of their business.

  I put the two together and came up with the scenario of Susie calling and Prim answering. That sen
t a shiver through me, so I said, ‘So long,’ to the guys and headed back to my, our, suite.

  I was halfway along the corridor when my mobile sounded. I tore it from my pocket, in the hope that it might be my wife wanting to kiss and make up, but the incoming number read-out showed me at once that it wasn’t. My caller was American, but it wasn’t anyone in my phone book. I pressed the receive button and muttered a noncommittal, ‘Yes,’ in case it was a wrong number.

  ‘Mr Blackstone?’ a man’s voice rumbled; a voice I thought I knew.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘This is John Wallinger.’ I’d been right. ‘Can you speak? Are you alone?’

  ‘Yes to both. What is it?’

  ‘Mr Blackstone, I want you to meet with me.’

  I joined up a number of mental dots, to form an ugly picture. ‘Has this become a family enterprise all of a sudden?’ I asked him. ‘Or was it all along?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that. I repeat, I’d like you to meet with me. It’s of vital importance to me that you do, and I believe it will be to you also.’

  ‘Lieutenant, I’m in Las Vegas, and I’m here to work. I can’t just hop on a plane and go to Minneapolis.’

  ‘I’m not in Minneapolis. I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There’s someone here I’d like you to meet.’

  ‘John, I can trust you, can I? If I go there I will be coming back, yes?’

  ‘I promise you, Mr Blackstone, I wish you no harm; the opposite in fact.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll be there. But tell me, man, what the hell’s it about?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. It’s best that you see for yourself. And one other thing, sir: don’t tell anyone about this, anyone at all.’

  ‘However you want it. What’s another mystery to me? Where do I meet you, and when?’

  ‘Midday tomorrow, at a restaurant called the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. I’ll be waiting in the bar.’

  I must be crazy, I thought. By that stage in the enterprise, I probably was, so without a second thought I headed down to the lobby and to the concierge. ‘You do travel bookings?’ I asked.

  ‘We do, sir,’ said yet another of the stunning women who seemed to populate the place.

  ‘Can you get me a flight to Santa Fe? I have to be there, in the city, by midday tomorrow, returning later in the day.’

  She shook her perfectly coiffured head. ‘By schedule, sir, that’s impossible. All the flights from McCarron go via Denver.’

  ‘Could I drive?’

  ‘Sir, it’s seven hundred miles. You’d need to leave now.’

  ‘What do I do, then?’

  ‘Private charter is your only option. I can probably find you a Lear jet for tomorrow. How many passengers will there be?’

  ‘Just me. Do it.’

  I waited while she called someone. Whoever it was they were on first-name terms; she was Anita, and he was Troy. When the conversation was over. . it involved a lot of nodding, as if they could see each other. . she came back to me. ‘That’s a reservation, sir. Your pilot’s name is Troy Hawkins, and he asks that you be at the Hawkins Air reception desk at McCarron airport by eight thirty tomorrow. It’ll be a two-hour flight, departing at around nine. That will give you time to make your meeting in the city. I’ve taken the liberty of asking Troy to have a car and driver at your disposal at Santa Fe.’

  ‘No liberty at all, Anita, that’s fine.’

  I paid for the charter there and then. Her smile grew even toothier when she saw the name on the credit card. Mine almost disappeared when I saw the cost, but I kept it fixed on, and signed on the dotted line.

  Chapter 25

  I said nothing to Prim about my trip. John Wallinger had made me promise to tell no one, and I sensed that he hadn’t envisaged any exceptions. Besides, I feared that she wouldn’t like being left alone, and the idea of having two women pissed off at me at the same time didn’t attract me.

  There had been no call from Susie, or from Wallinger, and when I checked AOL I found no new e-mails either.

  Prim wasn’t keen on leaving the suite but I wasn’t keen on staying there either, so I persuaded her that we should see some of the sights. We waited until some of the heat had gone from the day, and then set out.

  We stopped on the bridge that crosses the road from the Bellagio to watch the fountains, the hotel’s main public attraction. . apart from the slot machines, roulette and black-jack tables inside. They kicked off every half-hour or so, in a fantastic choreographed display, with Andreas Bocelli and Sarah Brightman singing their wee hearts out in the background.

  When that was done, we headed across the bridge and past Bally’s until we came to Paris, an enormous casino complex with streets lined with shops and restaurants and its own Eiffel Tower rising up out of it all, not quite as tall as the real thing, but going on for five hundred feet high, with an observation platform on top and a restaurant on the eleventh level. When we’d done that, we moved on to Venice, which has its own Grand Canal, singing gondoliers, the works. The people who are building Las Vegas. . oh, yes, it’s still growing. . don’t think small: they want Americans to keep their money in America, so they’ve brought Europe to them.

  We knew the real thing, though, so we crossed the Strip and explored New York, New York, which is a sort of Medium-sized Apple, with its version of the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t look for an inscription on its base, but if there is one I’ll bet it doesn’t say, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. . like the real one does. There’s a fair chance you’ll leave tired and poor, but the casino owners want you to arrive rich and wide awake.

  We grabbed a couple of chimichangas in a Mexican restaurant in a reproduction of SoHo village, then lost a few bucks in the slot machines. . you feel you have to; maybe their constant tinkling din is addictive. . before walking back to the Bellagio just before eleven, soaking up the spectacle of the Strip, all lit up in its night clothing.

  Before going up top, we looked in at the Fontana Bar; Liam was in there, with Erin, his wife, so we stopped to have a drink with them. If Erin was puzzled to see Prim with me, rather than Susie, she didn’t show it; but she was an air steward, so she’d probably seen all sorts of celebrity situations in her time. Liam, of course, knew Prim from Barcelona; there had been an incident there once, involving Jerry Gradi, and her nursing skills had come in very handy indeed.

  There were no messages showing on the phones upstairs, and nothing new on e-mail when I checked. I had to be downstairs for the car at eight, so I turned in. I looked at Prim. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked her.

  ‘Okay. I know what I’m going to do: I just have to wait for Paul to contact us again, that’s all.’

  ‘Good. In that case, since there don’t look like being any floods of tears tonight, that’s your room and that’s mine. Sleep tight.’

  She smiled at me. ‘You too. I really am sorry I’ve caused you all this bother, Oz.’

  Still I hadn’t said anything about my trip to Santa Fe. My intention was to be out of there before Prim surfaced in the morning, leaving her a note to say I’d be back later and to call me on the mobile if anything happened. But it didn’t work out that way: when I stepped out of my room, there she was in the living area, in T-shirt and shorts, and drinking coffee.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, when she saw how I was dressed.

  I improvised. ‘I told Santi Temple I’d look in on the filming, to get to know the boys and girls.’ You see? It wasn’t a direct lie. I’d have told her the truth, whatever John Wallinger had said; I didn’t, only because I thought that if I had, she might have been afraid that I was walking into a trap, designed to take me out of the picture. Actually, I hadn’t discounted that possibility entirely: the private plane and car were a kind of insurance. If I didn’t show up for the return journey, the alarm would be raised right away.

  ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be,’ I went on. ‘You know how to get in touch with me if you need to.’ I was
out of the door before she had a chance to ask me anything else.

  Troy Hawkins’s Lear jet turned out to be a Hawker Siddeley; I was pleased by that, because it’s slightly wider than the Lear. Captain Hawkins was a very sharp dude indeed, as was his co-pilot, Matthew, and the steward Rafaela, for all that her English was largely incomprehensible to my ear… even the unmangled one.

  We took off two minutes early from McCarron airport; when Matthew gave me our flight plan to New Mexico I wondered how we’d manage to get that high in that little bird, but the journey was as smooth as silk. I’d brought my script with me, and spent much of the time learning my lines for the scenes I’d be shooting with Liam through the week. I wasn’t worried about the part at all; there was nothing taxing in it. All the viewer needed to know was that my character, Oscar, was a thoroughly bad dude; they didn’t have to be given a window into his soul.

  Our touch-down at Santa Fe airport was as smooth as our take-off had been; we taxied into the general aviation terminal, and the door was opened in no time at all. I told Troy that I expected to be back in three hours, and that if there was to be any change in that I’d let him know.

  The car they had waiting for me was a Buick; my first impression was that New Mexico does not go big on European imports. When I told Jesus, my driver, where I wanted to go, he grinned; I could read the words ‘gringo tourist’ clearly from his expression.

  He took it steady on the way into the city. I had plenty of time and I didn’t want to be early; since Wallinger had summoned me there, he could get the bloody drinks in. We drove in through the suburbs on Highway 85, but since the airport is around twenty miles give or take a few, from the centre, we didn’t have that much time to kill.

  I read somewhere that the late Will Rogers. . he’s an American institution, but I’m not certain why… said, when he was still running to time, that the person who designed Santa Fe did so while riding on a jackass, backwards and drunk. I didn’t see any jackasses, going in either direction, drunk or sober, on the way, but by the time we’d reached the meandering heart of the place and Jesus began to pick his way though a maze of one-way streets, I began to get old Will’s drift.