Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “Bloody hell. What’s it been? Eight years?” I said. “What are you – ?”

  “I’m with Keatings. New York,” Andrew went on, emptying his pockets of breath mints, matches, a Zippo and an old Bic before fishing out his mobile and wrapping it in its wire, laying it on the damp table. “Six years now. Just over for a fortnight to see our friend here,” and he tipped a nod at the squat, brick-built frame by the bar. “Mr O’Shea is selling his Manhattan real estate and bringing his dollars to a big new development planned in Holborn. I’m just shepherding both sides through for him.”

  “Real estate? What happened to – ?”

  “And what’s your story, Mr Martin?” O’Shea asked with a twinkle, returning with the drinks. He had a surprisingly high voice with a waft of heather to it. A voice more suited to hollering gibberish at sheepdogs than at shareholders. “How do you come to know this shyster?”

  “Shyster? Ha ha!” Andrew laughed. Far too loudly for far too long, eyes flashing with nerves, which told me that if my old pal was in big business, O’Shea had to be in huge.

  “Uhmm, University,” I said.

  “We were down the hall from each other,” Andrew gabbled, sipping his drink. “Hung out. Played chess on the stairs, you remember? When you weren’t at the cinema. This man saw everything. Had a bloody great Robert Redford up on his wall for three years. Do you remember? Caused some rumours, I can tell you.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed.

  “Neil here was in the arts crowd. Drama types. That lot. They didn’t really have much time for us environmentalists.”

  “Environmental what now?” O’Shea furrowed, shooting a quizzical look at Andrew.

  “Oh a long time ago, a looong time ago,” Andrew soothed with a grin. “But bloody hell, Neil Martin,” and he shook his head. “My word. Good to see you, old man,” and he raised his glass. The two men clinked so I joined in obediently. “So, spill the gen. What you doing with yourself for eight years? Running an Odeon somewhere?”

  “Uhm, no. No, not exactly. I’ve got a shop. Had a shop. Soho. Sorry, you’ve caught me a bit –”

  “Soho! Ahhhh, loik that is it?” O’Shea smirked, his gull-brows taking flight in a fluster of feathers.

  “N-no. Nothing – Memorabilia. Movie stuff, comics, y’know.”

  “Ahhh. Sure but Soho’s not the same since they cleaned it all up,” O’Shea said, drifting off. “Far too respectable these days. What happened with that little street I had Keatings look at not so long ago?” he said to Andrew, ticking him off a little. “Had my eye on that, I did. Going for a song it was. You should have been quicker with that, lad. Get me a valuation on what the square foot is going for now. What I would have made. Someone in your office is going to compensate for that.”

  “Consider it done,” Andrew nodded, reaching into his khakis and tugging out a red spiral-bound notebook, sliding a pencil from the coils.

  “I shouldn’t be the one chasing you up on this stuff son,” O’Shea said loudly, draining his glass. “Anyway now, big day tomorrow. I’m gonna leave you youngsters to it.”

  O’Shea stood and Andrew followed. I watched them pump each other’s hands vigorously, shoulders jarring, exchanging nods and dates and figures and manly shoulder slaps, before O’Shea bid the pub farewell, pitching and yawing out onto the street.

  Benno came back with more drinks, collapsing into his seat. The grin was now just a loose smile. More relaxed, like someone had taken the guy ropes out. He rolled his shoulders and rubbed his face. It appeared the jovial bonhomie he’d kept on the boil with his business partner was something he was having difficulty sustaining at length.

  “You all right old mate?” I asked.

  “Work. O’Shea’s … forget it. Forget it. Boring. Heyyy, here’s to you. How long’s it been? God, Neil Martin …”

  I sat and watched as he did this for a little while longer until eventually we toasted again.

  Drinks downed, and with a little shudder, shaking the office pressure from his shoulders, Benno began to relax a little. He bullied me into tugging out my wallet and we compared pictures of wives and children.

  A sudden, sick feeling struck me and I felt my palms drain cold.

  Had – ?

  Had Benno somehow heard? About the shop flood? On some obscure estate-agent blog? Got wind I might be in trouble and be causing Jane to look elsewhere? Did he still – ?

  I mean, Christ was it possible he’d taken the flight to the UK to try to muscle in on his high-school crush after all this time?

  No. No, he couldn’t.

  Of course he fucking couldn’t.

  Idiot.

  I shook myself and breathed out, trying to slow my heart. What the hell was happening to me?

  I slapped my wallet shut and laid it aside, Benno still flipping me through his glamorous life. His wife, sitting lit by a low sun on some sort of tractor in a wheat field, college sweater and all American teeth like a GAP ad. The obligatory twins in matching mittens, all pink cheeks in Central Park snow. Ben and Sandy, his two collies, outside his Long Island country house. The whole bit.

  I looked over my old friend with tired eyes, looking for traces of the beardy face from those nights in chilly halls a lifetime ago. He was barely recognisable. Gone was the shoulder length hair, the knotted leather wrist bands and beads. Gone was the sloganeering T-shirt, the donkey jacket and battered walking boots, splashed with caked-in mud. Gone. Nowhere to be seen.

  In the years since University, Benno had gone and become a man. Very clearly. He had not only reached that estate, but packed its boot with deck chairs and driven his family to the Hamptons in it.

  Sitting there, listening to his stories, melancholy sidled up in that way it has and gave me a nudge, pointing out, quite rightly, that Benno appeared now to be everything Edward wanted me to be. Everything Edward wanted for Jane. Everything Jane deserved.

  I flipped open my wallet again and blinked at the smiling faces, creased and buckled behind milky plastic. I promptly closed it again.

  Benno continued. Here she is in Barbados. Here they are outside their new home.

  He was a man. A real man. You only had to look at him. Man’s hands, a man’s voice and man’s shoulders, on which he successfully took the burden of a proud family. A family that he would never disappoint. Never let down.

  Not like some.

  “… I mean there were bigger places up there, sure. But we thought five bedrooms would be enough. The dogs like the space, the twins have their own room. Pricey, but then if this damned Holborn deal comes off, which knowing O’Shea … Hey, you should come for Christmas,” and Andrew closed his wallet and flipped his notebook open again.

  “Still with the red notebooks eh?” I said, my voice cracking a little.

  “God yeah of course. You remember. Old habits,” he smiled, giving it a waggle. “Batteries can’t fail on these.” He flipped through pages of scribbles to a clean sheet. “Let us have your number. I’ll get Veronica to sort out the details. Neil? … Neil? Hey hey hey, you all right old chap?”

  “God,” I sighed.

  “Heyyy, what’s up?”

  “Sorry, nothing. It’s … Nothing.”

  “Mate?”

  “I just …” I began, but that one stalled straight off the grid. “I never meant …” but that one ploughed straight into the first one and the two were towed off in clouds of smoke. “You’ve caught me at a bad time,” I said finally. “I’ve had something of an afternoon. Culminating with the two hours I just spent with the police.”

  “The police? Bloody hell, really?”

  “Actually no,” I said, my head thumping. “Not really.”

  The bank had kept me waiting in a variety of different-sized rooms, reading a variety of different-sized posters, a variety of different sized young women in polyester giving me slips to sign, exchange rates to confirm and my driving licence the once over.

  I’d sat fidgeting on different-sized chairs throughout this drawn-o
ut tour, shirt damp, knees bouncing, trying to focus on the last anxious hour.

  Laura had cleaned herself up a little. Said she’d better go and hobble along to the coffee shop. Talk to her boss. Explain. Try and get, if not her job back, at least her plimsolls.

  She’d called Grayson from my mobile while I’d been on the phone to the bank giving out mother’s maiden name and date of birth. Even with the account supervisor chattering away in my ear, I’d made out Grayson’s yelling. A few grand down? He wasn’t going in a few grand down! This, punctuated by a smattering of ‘dumb bitches.’

  But he’d finally seen sense. Christopher, bed-ridden, wounded and dying, wasn’t going to argue over stolen property for the sake of a few thousand pounds.

  Finally, in the smallest of the bank’s rooms, behind heavy glass and deep locks, I signed the last of the bank slips and watched as another member of staff counted out the bills onto the desk in front of me. I licked my dry mouth and took deep breaths, watching her slip the large pink notes into paper bands, stacking the piles just-so on the table.

  Thank Christ I’d never listened to Edward. Thank Christ. If he’d had his way, Lana’s money would now have been earning its keep in offshore funds, index-tracking unit trusts and all sorts of nonsense. Locked in and untouchable.

  But as it was, by ten thirty-five, I was moving swiftly and conspicuously back across the squeaky bank floor, watched by a cluster of quizzical bank staff, a bulging Tesco carrier bag wrapped about my knuckles, out onto the chilly street.

  The morning traffic was beeping and coughing. It didn’t seem to be moving any faster than I could, but what with the bag of notes, I felt I would be safer in the back of a cab, so waved down, address given and seat taken, I slammed the door and collapsed with an anxious sigh.

  Holborn to The Waldorf was south, straight down Kingsway. Ten minutes, fifteen tops. That’d still give Grayson an hour to get over to Kensington. Plenty of time.

  Stomach churning, I watched the traffic for a while, mind elsewhere. It would be all right. The team would be angry of course. A few grand short is likely to piss off the most generous of shyster. But it was this or nothing. And nothing would be noticeably worse.

  And me? I did some mental calculations. Fifty grand to Laura. She passes it to Grayson. Take into account the exchange rate, my twenty per cent …

  Ninety-five grand or so. Minus Lana’s fifty back in the bank, I’d be forty-eight grand up. Maurice’s solicitors, the bank? They’d be covered. Just, but they’d be covered.

  In fact, all in all, I’d almost managed to relax by the time the cab wheeled to a halt in front of The Waldorf with a squeak of brake pad. Standing between a braided doorman and a large potted plant, Laura shifted from one tiny plimsolled foot to the other, bare arms wrapped around each other tightly, gazing out at the traffic. Her eyes widened with hope as she caught sight of me. She ran across the wide pavement to the kerb.

  “Is it all right? Have you got it?” she said in a frightened voice.

  I handed her the bag, the cab idling grumpily.

  “How you doing?” I said. “You okay?”

  She nodded little nods, blinking. Her face was washed, scrubbed clean, eyes pink and sore.

  “And have you spoken to him?” I asked. “Grayson? Is he okay?”

  “He’s not happy,” she sniffed, clutching the bag to her chest. “But I reasoned with him. Told him it was all I could get.”

  “And the team? Henry? Pete?”

  “I spoke to the guy in the lobby. Black guy. Pete is it? I explained what had happened. That it would be short. They weren’t best pleased.”

  “But it’s all still going ahead right? We’re still on?”

  She nodded, blinking tearily.

  “Then you’d better go,” I said. “It’s nearly eleven.”

  “When will I see you? Do you want to wait for me here? I’ll be down in a second.”

  “No,” I said. “No, I’d better get out of the way. Come back when you get the chance.”

  Then, after a hesitant beat, shifting on the pavement, she leant forward to kiss me, hand snaking up about my neck, pulling me towards her. Flushing, I twisted awkwardly. We bumped temples and I negotiated a dry peck on her cheek, pulling away early.

  “Move,” I said. “Go on.”

  She half smiled, blinking and wiping an eye, before turning and jogging back across the cold street. The doorman heaved open the door and she disappeared inside.

  I breathed out slowly and climbed back into the cab.

  “Yes mate?”

  “Brigstock Place,” I said, collapsing against the seat. “Thank you.”

  “So when did you realise?” Andrew asked, stuffing his red book away and gulping his scotch back with a cough.

  “Not for a while,” I sighed, chewing my cheek. The pub was filling up around us with the chattering Barbours and slingbacks of Theatreland. “Hope, I suppose. I got back to the shop just after eleven. Had a coffee with a guy called Schwartz. He runs a bookshop next door to my place. Reminded him to clear the rubbish from round the back which he’d forgotten to do again. I tidied up. Tried to keep my eyes off the clock. Christopher phoned twice, telling me everything was set, everybody was ready. Not to panic. Nearly there dear boy, nearly there. I pulled on my wellies and cleaned up my basement for a while. I had a flood. While ago now. That’s how all this … Anyway, just for something to do, y’know? Poked away at the drain, gunk up to my elbow. But all the time this … this gnawing worry in my insides.”

  “And you didn’t even … I mean not for a second?”

  I looked at Andrew and down at my drink, moving the coins on the table into a smiley face shape.

  “Couple of customers came by. Must have been around half past twelve. Sniffed through my posters, did my crossword. We had a couple of rounds of Connect Four, or tried to. They both managed to whip me in about three moves. Which … now I think about it, means there’s a good chance they were cheating.”

  “You didn’t notice?”

  “I couldn’t concentrate. I kept staring at my Elvis clock. Looking at the phone. Jane called. Reminding me to pick up some dessert for – shit,” and I checked my chunky watch with a woozy blink. Ten to three in Bangkok and ten to five in Rio de Janeiro. Which meant it was ten to where-the-hell-have-you-been in Putney.

  “Somewhere you have to be, old man?”

  I thought about Catherine and Jack. Of dinner drying out on a low heat. Jane at the window. Jane phoning the shop. Jane thinking I was going to miss the fireworks.

  Yeah right.

  “Neil? Are you all – ?”

  “Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer. I shut the shop – four o’clock it must have been – and jogged over to the café to see if Laura was back. If she’d heard anything.”

  I slid two pennies an inch towards me across the table, turning the copper smile into a frown.

  It was busy and loud, the hiss of steam, the clatter of thick china, yelling, laughing. Most of the tables were taken, most of the booths likewise.

  “Yes my friend?” a handsome Italian called out, wiping his hands on a tea towel. “What I get for you?”

  “Is Laura here? Is she back yet?”

  “Laura!” he called. “Hey, Laura! You boyfriend here!”

  “No, I’m – it’s nothing like –”

  The Italian gave me a wink as Laura pushed through the plastic ribbons between the café and the back area and looked about the shop, finally fixing me with a lost, questioning look.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Uhm, no. No sorry, I wanted the other one? The other Laura? Taller, dark hair?”

  “I only Laura here,” the girl smiled.

  I don’t know how long we stood looking at each other awkwardly. Probably just a second or two.

  All I know is that a hell of a lot went through my head as I stared at this stranger.

  None of it good.

  None of it good at all.

  Fifteen panic
ky minutes later, my mobile began to buzz, but I barely heard it over the thumping of my sweat glands and slam of my heart. Running, hand waving out desperately for a cab, I fumbled inside my jacket and checked the display bouncing in front of me.

  Shit.

  “H-Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me. Where are you? Are you on your way home? What’s that noise?”

  The noise was Oxford Street. The lower end, near Selfridges. Buses, tourists, shoppers. They filled the street, chatting, dawdling, yelling once in a while as the sweaty lunatic pushed past them in a terrified jog.

  “Yes … yes, just near the station,” I panted as calmly as I could. Cabs? Where were all the cabs?

  “You sound funny. Are you all right?”

  “Fine, f-fine,” I squeaked. “How … how are you? Everything okay?”

  A bike slammed its horn as I dodged, tripping over a side street.

  “Good. Lana’s had her nap. I’ve tidied around for Jack and Catherine. Did you get dessert?”

  Shit shit shit.

  “Yes, yes no problem,” I said, trying to steady my breathing. I spotted a cab turning out of Portman Street, roof light on. I began to flap frantically. “See you soon.”

  “Love you.”

  I waved my arms, pounding across the busy street, slamming against the taxi.

  “Awroit pal? Easy there.”

  “Kensington,” I panted, hanging breathlessly on the window. “You know behind the Albert Hall? Something Mansions or other …”

  My phone was crackling again. A voice.

  “H-Hello?”

  “Jack. Hi, it’s Jane. Just a quickie. I’ve spoken to Neil and he’s –”

  “Jane?” I said, clambering into the cab. “It’s still me. Sorry, I can’t have hung up properly.”

  I thumbed the line closed. I sat and stared at the phone’s display.

  I didn’t hang up properly.

  An itchy thought trundled through my head, browsed a moment for somewhere to sit down and then trundled off again.