Pretend We're Dead

by Mark Timlin

  He ignored me.

  ‘Someone must know you’re here,’ I said.

  ‘Sure. But most of them depend on me for their jobs. They’re not going to tell.’

  ‘So that was why you were at the concert the other night?’

  I saw Dawn turn to look at me.

  ‘He was clocking me,’ I explained. ‘I thought he fancied Angela.’

  ‘As you would.’ Dawn spoke for the first time since she’d entered the room.

  A thought occurred to me. ‘You didn’t set this up with Kennedy-Sloane, did you?’ I asked Quinn.

  He shook his head. ‘He doesn’t know I’m in the country. Didn’t I make that clear? He just happened to mention that you were escorting his girlfriend to the affair. He knows that I’m involved with the band at home. I asked around. Someone knew her, and you were sitting with her. Simple.’

  Caspian had been sitting with her too, but then I doubt if anyone would have taken him for a private detective cum bodyguard. Mind you, the way things were going, I could say the same thing about myself. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘I would have hated to have read him so wrong for all these years.’

  ‘I guess you didn’t,’ said Quinn.

  ‘Who are your friends?’ I asked, looking at Tarantula and his two mates. ‘Three of the seven dwarfs on steroids? Sneezy? Grumpy? Dopey?’

  Quinn ignored my levity. He was getting plenty of practice at that. ‘Old buddies of mine,’ he said. ‘We used to work together. I was a tour co-ordinator for some very big names during the first half of the eighties. These were my main men.’

  The road crew from hell, I thought, but left it unsaid. Instead I remarked, ‘And then you got into embezzlement. Good career move.’

  He gave me a sour look, as if he didn’t like what I was saying. Which was fine by me. He wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘But you didn’t come all this way on a whim,’ I said. ‘And you were in England long before I told Kennedy-Sloane about this place. Why did you go to all this trouble on the strength of one lousy letter? You told me you get them all the time. What made this one different?’

  ‘What made this one different was that it wasn’t just one,’ said Quinn. ‘There were a whole bunch. And the later ones couldn’t’ve been written by anyone else but the real Jay Harrison. I knew he was alive, I just didn’t know where. I asked around and your name came up as the man most likely to find out. And you did.’

  You fucker, I thought.

  ‘You took me for a bit of a mug then, didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘If that means I took you for a ride, sure,’ Quinn grinned as he said it. ‘So where’s the other guy? This Brother Julius character I’ve heard so much about, who’s been keeping our friend out of the public eye for so long?’

  ‘We had a little truth or consequence session,’ I replied. ‘The consequence is that he’s deceased.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Go look upstairs if you don’t believe me. He’s in one of the bedrooms at the back of the place, one floor up. He’s the one with the head made of mush.’

  ‘Who killed him?’ asked Quinn.

  ‘I did,’ said Jay Harrison.

  ‘Did you now,’ said Quinn. ‘Naughty, naughty.’ He turned back to me. ‘As a matter of interest,’ he said. ‘Who’s buried in Harrison’s grave? Did you ever find out?’

  ‘Someone named Billy Sayer,’ I replied.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It wasn’t his lucky day.’

  Quinn grinned again.

  ‘Why did you steal my money?’ Harrison said to Quinn suddenly. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was there,’ said Quinn. ‘A great lump of dead cash, just appreciating all the time and never being used.’

  ‘But you had use for it?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Quinn.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Ten million. Twelve million. Maybe a little more.’

  ‘Bad investments?’ I asked.

  ‘The market crashed. I couldn’t recoup.’

  ‘You lost it all on stocks?’

  ‘Most. But we partied a little, didn’t we, guys?’ He looked at the other three for confirmation. Their smiles were all I needed.

  ‘Up your nose?’ I said.

  ‘Some. But that’s all water under the bridge now,’ said Quinn.

  Good metaphor, if you’ve done a lot of coke, I thought, but didn’t say a word.

  ‘I’m afraid the time has come to close the account,’ Quinn said finally, as if it were pre-ordained.

  ‘There’ll still be people looking into where the money went,’ I said. ‘Even if you kill us all.’

  ‘It’ll take for ever. Maybe by then I can pay the money back.’

  ‘And maybe you won’t.’

  ‘That’s hardly your problem,’ he said.

  And wasn’t that the truth?

  The seven of us looked at each other in silence for a moment.

  End of song, beginning of story, as Louis Armstrong said in High Society, I thought. Now what the hell got me into that?

  ‘I think it’s time for us all to leave quietly,’ said Quinn. ‘We’ve got a couple of cars outside. We don’t want to attract any undue attention here, do we?’

  Don’t we? I thought. Just the opposite as far as I was concerned. But I had no say in the matter.

  ‘Sam. You and Eddie ride herd on Nick and his lady. Joe and I’ll take care of Harrison.’

  The two roadies who hadn’t spoken, and who I assumed to be Sam and Eddie, put away their guns and headed in Dawn’s and my direction. Tarantula, who must have been Joe, did the same with his, and moved towards Jay Harrison.

  Dawn said, ‘I’m no one’s fucking lady.’

  Good for you kid, I thought, as she said it. That’ll show ’em. Then she showed ’em properly.

  From somewhere that Tarantula, or Joe, or whatever the hell his name was, had missed in his body search of her, she produced the flick knife that she’d had in her stocking top the night of The Virgin Mary concert. With a snap the blade appeared, and she straightened her arm and stuck it into Sam or Eddie’s chest, alongside his right armpit. He looked down at the black handle of the knife as it protruded from his body and touched it almost in wonder.

  We all stood perfectly still, until I grabbed Dawn’s arm and yelled to Harrison, ‘Jay. Let’s go,’ then kicked out at Lamar Quinn’s gun hand and connected beautifully so that the automatic was torn from his grasp and landed on the far side of the desk where he was sitting with a thump. ‘Move it, Jay,’ I shouted, and he slammed Tarantula in the chest and sent him reeling against the roadie who hadn’t been stabbed, and was clawing at the automatic in his belt, and I dragged Dawn out of the room, ripping the key from the lock as I went, closely followed by Jay Harrison. When all three of us were safely outside in the corridor, I slammed the door shut behind us, and locked it.

  Not a shot had been fired.

  ‘Come on,’ I shouted, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  Harrison started in the direction of the foyer, but I caught his bicep and said, ‘There might be more outside. Is there a back way?’

  He nodded, and we went back in the direction we’d come, only this time he pushed through a set of swing doors into a tiled corridor, and Dawn and I followed. As the doors swung shut behind us, I heard the sound of the office door being smashed off its hinges, and shouting from behind us, but still no shots.

  We dashed up a flight of stairs, and along yet another bare, starkly white-painted hall.

  Harrison was starting to sweat, and his breathing was laboured.

  ‘How far?’ I said.

  ‘Not far,’ he gasped in reply. ‘We can get through the church and out the other side.’

  We moved off, but more slowly, and Harrison’s breath was coming in stentorian gasps.
>
  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked, as we reached yet another door which led to one more bleak, concrete passageway.

  Harrison leant one hand against the wall and put the other to his chest. From behind us I could hear the sound of boot heels clattering on the stairs. ‘Just a minute,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve got to get going,’ I urged him.

  Dawn touched his face. It was as pale and sweaty as Brother Julius’s had been when he’d been confronted in Jay’s room. Not a healthy sight.

  ‘He’s ill,’ said Dawn.

  ‘He’ll be a lot iller if that mob catch up with us.’ I turned to him. ‘Jay, we’ve got to get out of here, or find somewhere to hide.’ The bare walls of the corridor seemed to mock me with their echo as I said it. You couldn’t have hidden a cockroach where we were.

  Harrison looked at me. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I just can’t. Thanks for trying to help, but I can’t go on.’

  ‘You must,’ I said, but he just shook his head, smiled an angelic smile that made him look twenty-five years younger, and touched Dawn’s hand with his own, as he leaned his back against the wall and slowly slid down into a sitting position.

  I knelt down next to Harrison and felt for his pulse. There was none. I laid him flat and beat my fists down on to his chest, and the door we’d just come through burst open and Lamar Quinn, Tarantula and the roadie who hadn’t been stabbed piled through, all carrying their guns, which I noticed were cocked, ready to fire. They slid to a halt when they saw us, and Quinn snapped, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Cardiac arrest,’ I said. ‘He’s had a hell of a day.’ I pinched Jay Harrison’s nose closed and prepared to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  ‘Get him off, Joe,’ said Quinn, and Tarantula grabbed me by the hair and dragged me away from Jay Harrison’s still form. He threw me against the wall and gestured that I stay down.

  ‘He’s still got a chance,’ I protested.

  Quinn shook his head.

  ‘You bastard,’ said Dawn.

  ‘Shut up, cunt,’ said Tarantula. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet.’

  ‘Leave them,’ said Quinn. ‘It’s all over.’

  ‘Is it?’ I asked, from my undignified position on the floor.

  ‘Sure. Harrison’s dead. That’s what we came here for. From natural causes too. Couldn’t be better. Nobody’ll ever be able to prove who he was now. There’s nothing more that you can do. You’ve been paid handsomely, and I’ll make sure you get a big bonus. I’ll get the money to Chris Kennedy-Sloane as soon as we get back Stateside.’

  ‘As easy as that,’ I said.

  ‘Sure. Why not? What do you care whether Jay Harrison is alive or dead?’

  I thought about the poster I had on my wall again, and the records I used to listen to.

  I cared.

  ‘Not a lot,’ I said. But I lied.

  ‘So we part friends. And put all this down to experience,’ said Quinn.

  I nodded. ‘Why not?’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ said Quinn, and let the hammer of his gun down gently, put it away, then said to his companions, ‘Guys, it’s finished,’ and reluctantly they too uncocked their pistols and returned them to the waistbands of their jeans.

  ‘How about my gun?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll keep it as a souvenir,’ said Quinn. ‘I’ll have it mounted on my office wall.’ He grinned again. ‘And now sadly we have to part. I won’t say that it’s been nice knowing you, but it’s certainly been interesting. Come on, Eddie. Joe, let’s get outta here. We gotta get Sam to a doctor.’

  Joe Tarantula walked over to Dawn and swung his hand round and slapped her hard in the face. So hard that her cheek went white, then suffused with blood, leaving a strawberry-coloured mark mimicking the four fingers of his hand. I started to rise, but Quinn put his hand on the butt of his gun.

  ‘That’s for m’buddy ya stuck, bitch,’ said Joe Tarantula. ‘You’re lucky I don’t kill ya.’

  ‘Joe,’ said Quinn. ‘C’m’on. We’re finished here.’ And the three of them went back through the door the way they’d come in.

  27

  So there the three of us stood and sat and lay. Well, two of us really. The third was just a shell. A dead husk that the spirit had left. I slid over and touched Jay Harrison’s wrist again. There was still no pulse and his body was beginning to cool.

  I got up and went over to Dawn and held her. The mark on her face was starting to bruise up, and I felt a hard tug of anger in my belly. ‘How’s your face?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll survive. I’ve had lots worse.’

  That didn’t make it any better.

  ‘Is Jay dead?’ asked Dawn.

  I nodded.

  ‘I liked him,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Good question. Get the hell out of here I think is favourite. There’s two dead bodies in the place and we’ll have to answer a load of uncomfortable questions if we stick around.’

  ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We take the money and run.’

  ‘Did I say that?’

  ‘You just said it to that American.’

  ‘I thought it was preferable to getting shot.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘We go and find Lamar Quinn and his pals and wreak some serious havoc. I’m well pissed off. That geezer hit you. He didn’t have to do that. No one hits my wife.’

  ‘He hurt your pride you mean?’

  ‘Christ, Dawn. Let’s not get into all that now. He didn’t need to hit you. Or hurt you when he searched you. And Quinn took the piss. And once upon a time I used to listen to Jay Harrison sing, and I thought that his songs might change the world. And Quinn thought that I wouldn’t care what happened to him as long as enough cash changed hands. And yeah, they hurt my pride if you must know. You and my pride are pretty much all I’ve got in the world. Mess with them and take the consequences. Are those enough reasons for you? Or do you want more?’

  Dawn pulled away and looked up into my face. ‘You’re OK, Nick,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I know exactly why I married you.’

  I kissed her hard. ‘Can we go now?’ I asked.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To see Mr Quinn.’

  ‘We don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Don’t we? You haven’t been keeping up with the entertainment section of the daily paper. The Virgin Mary is starting a three-week stint at the old Hammy Odeon tonight. The Apollo they call it now. It’s the hottest ticket in town. What’s the betting old Lamar will be hanging out there?’

  ‘But they’ve got guns.’

  ‘So we get a gun.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Wanna bet Julius had one?’

  ‘Where would it be?’

  ‘Where all villains keep their guns. In the top right-hand drawer of his desk. Come on, babe, let’s go see.’

  We went downstairs back to Brother Julius’s office. There were a few people around by then. Obviously all the action had attracted some attention. Dawn and I walked past them like we owned the place.

  When we got to the door of the office I remembered I’d broken the key off in the lock. Smart move. It was still there.

  Using my good foot I kicked at the door until it splintered and swung open. Brother Anthony was still lying, trussed and bound, where we’d left him. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

  I knelt down beside him. He was still breathing, but not happy. I slapped him gently on the cheek and said, ‘Not much longer, babe. Stick around.’ Not that he had much choice in the matter.

  I sat in the chair behind the desk and tried the drawers. They were all unlocked but one. As I’d surmised it was the top right-hand drawer. Brother Julius must have been as big a fan of old film
noir as I was.

  On the top of the desk was a hefty letter opener in the shape of a stiletto. I jammed it into the gap between the drawer and the desk, close to the lock, and applied some pressure. With a squeal the lock gave. Inside, along with some cheque books and letters, was a nickel-plated Colt .45 1911 Al automatic, a spare, empty clip, and an almost full box of fifty .45 shells. Nice gun. Showed taste. A real man-stopper. Exactly what I needed. I grinned, took out the gun’s clip and cleared the action. The chamber was empty, but the clip contained seven brass-jacketed rounds. I slapped it back home, chambered a round, took out the clip again and inserted a fresh bullet in the vacant space, cocked and locked the gun, put the spare clip in my pocket and gave the box of shells to Dawn.

  ‘Hold these, doll, will you,’ I said. Then I hefted the letter opener in my hand and gave that to her too. ‘You did good, stabbing that wanker. You’d better have this. Might come in handy later. Where had you hidden the other knife by the way?’

  ‘I always like to keep something up my sleeve,’ she replied.

  ‘Terrific,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  We walked out together. There was a small knot of people outside the room, but no blue uniforms. I showed them the gun and they let us pass. We walked through to the foyer, out of the main doors and back to the car.

  Then we went to Hammersmith.

  On the way I got Dawn to load the spare clip with ammunition. It might turn out to be a busy night.

  28

  The wide pavement outside the Apollo was pretty much deserted when we rolled by. I looked at my watch. The show had to be well started. I drove the Chevy round looking for somewhere to park, past a couple of vanloads of Old Bill waiting for the riots to start. They might not have to wait long. I kept driving and looking. Fat chance. Every street and parking lot around the theatre was locked up tight with vehicles. I eventually found a space within walking distance, just about big enough for a Ford Escort, and slammed the Chevy in, front wheels and bonnet across the pavement, the big estate back end stuck out into traffic. If it got a bash, too bad. That’s what we pay insurance for.

  We bailed out, I locked the motor and off we went. Just before we got to the Apollo, I stopped Dawn and said, ‘Are you sure about this?’