Conman

by Richard Asplin

  I sat, dizzy, blinking and bewildered in the small cubicle, rubbing my bruised chest when I got the faint whiff of pipe tobacco and heard what Andrew had obviously heard already.

  “Bah! Here you are old fruit ’n’ nut.”

  “H-Here I am,” Andrew squeaked. Taps were running again. “Just finishing up. Sorry to keep you …”

  “Not at all dear fellow, not at all,” Christopher warbled. “Need a quick pinch-off myself.” I heard his brogues clicking across the tiled floor, a shadow passing in the two-inch gap under the door. I held my breath, hands out against the thin wooden walls, heartbeat hammering in my ears. “Heady numbers taken you by surprise I bet, hmmn?”

  “No no. I-I mean yes. Yes. I had no idea it was so … I mean, like I said, it was my father’s …”

  “Well. It’s a mint condition Golden Ager, you see. 1938 to 45. Perennial.” I shut my eyes at the sound of a belt buckle, of zip, a pause, and then that familiar masculine sigh as he took a seat in the cubicle next door. “Like anything else, there’s an element of fashion to the market,” he went on, voice echoey. “If an artist dies it’s helpful. Or a fiftieth anniversary,” and on he went. “Anyhoo, if all’s Con Brio?” Christopher said standing, zipping up. “I’ve ordered coffee.” He flushed loudly and moved back out into the bathroom.

  “Be one second,” Andrew said.

  I held my breath as brogues clicked, a tap skooshed and the door swung closed with a clunk.

  Oh this wasn’t good.

  This wasn’t good at all.

  “He’s playing you,” I said, pushing out into the bathroom. Andrew was drying his hands. “It’s started. Whatever he’s doing, it’s started. We need to be careful.”

  “You sure?”

  I motioned at the cubicle.

  “A pinch off? He didn’t make a sound. Not a parp, not a strain, not a plop. In fact … ” and I slid into his booth. “Look.” The lid was down and the loo roll was still folded neatly into a virginal point. “He only came in here to check you were alone. Make sure you weren’t calling the cops or changing your tape player. He’s up to something. We just don’t know what.”

  “Then I had better find out. You’ve have that address?”

  I waved the paper at him.

  “I’ll call the office. You pick up the artist’s impression from reception and take it over to Holborn. See you back here in an hour.”

  I nodded and, taking a last longing look at my satchel, crept out of the bathroom.

  “Thank you,” I said to the maître d’ quickly as I slunk past, but nobody paid me any attention. Not him, not the man at his lectern.

  An Australian man dressed in a navy suit holding a battered burgundy briefcase.

  A familiar man. Very familiar. As familiar, in fact, as his driver.

  Sat at the kerb in a shiny Mercedes, smoking a foul cigarette, peaked cap pulled down, hiding his eyes. And, if I wasn’t mistaken, an unruly thatch of thick brown hair.

  A speedy cab had me climbing Andrew’s office steps near St Paul’s fifteen squirm-filled minutes later. The security guard gave my attire an inquiring “Awright sir?” which I batted back with a small smile and a purposeful stride, pushing through the glass into the busy lobby where dozens of suited men and women milled about in front of the desk, heels clicking, phones trilling. The envelope was just where Andrew had said it would be so I was back on the street and into the cab, turning a wide circle back towards Holborn moments later, resuming my journey and picking up my paranoia just where I’d left it.

  What were Henry and Julio’s roles in all this? Where was this going? My mind had played it over and over again, trying every possible permutation of cross, double-cross and triple double-cross with extra cheese. Was Henry about to join their restaurant table? A mysterious Aussie stranger with a case full of money?

  A sickening thought arrived in the back of the cab with me. I didn’t want to budge up to give it room but it didn’t seem to care as it plonked itself on my lap with a horrid grin.

  Was Henry swinging by their table at that very moment? Playing the greedy buyer? Would Henry top Christopher’s valuation? Offer quick cash?

  No. No, it couldn’t … Andrew … He wouldn’t. He’d see though that. He’d … Christ.

  “This it mate? Hoi, mate?”

  The cabbie’s voice stretched out to me like a lifeline, hauling me from the thick quicksand of worry. I looked up. He’d pulled up at a wide kerb, huge building boards circling the block, the world shaking with pneumatic drills, shouts and clangs, a film of pink brick dust on the air.

  I piled out, the cab’s motor idling, looking up and down the street quickly.

  “Hey! Hey fellah!” O’Shea’s voice rang out over the industrial din. He was positioned by a doorway to the site, a fluorescent yellow waistcoat over his fat suit, a dusty hard-hat perched high on his head. “Hey! You lookin’ for me, boy?”

  I scuttled over, handing him the envelope.

  “Sorry!” I hollered over the steel chatter of drills. “Andrew got caught up. Said this was what you wanted. Sends his apologies.”

  O’Shea’s dusty fat fingers scrabbled the lip open.

  “Jesus has dat boy gat himself some cheek, that he has.” He shook his podgy face, tutting, a curled lip releasing whisky breath and yellow snaily teeth. “I’m not some fetlock-tuggin’ farmhand, y’hear me? What does he think? Oim’ some charity is it? Some charity? Help The Eejit?”

  “I …”

  “Only ’ting worse than that boy’s manners is his golf-swing.”

  “I … Sorry, Mr O’Shea, I have to be getting going …”

  I was backing away. Try as I might, I couldn’t help but picture Andrew sliding a velvet sleeve across a dining table, Laura’s toes in his groin, his mind in her cleavage, Henry swapping cases surreptitiously behind his back.

  “T’inks missin’ a hole or two’ll warm me to him does he?” O’Shea stuffed the contents of the envelope back in roughly. “While he pulls a stunt like this? You can tell ’im oi ain’t impressed. Tell ’im that from me. Oi ain’t impressed at’all, y’hear? Hey, y’hear?”

  It was creeping up on five-thirty, as the cab crept up on Soho.

  God. Please. Please let it be all right. Fear bunched tight like wet rope in my throat, short shallow breaths pumping. Let Andrew be paying attention. Let him … Let him talk his way out of it. Feign another appointment, make his excuses. Up and leave. Not suspicious, not shifty. Just … just God, let him leave. Get clear. Get safe. Please God.

  The cab wheeled round onto Wardour Street. We were a minute away.

  Or let them have gone. God yes. Left him to finish his coffee. Let this have been stage one. The long con. Stage one of ten. Just laying the groundwork.

  We turned onto Lexington Street.

  “Here is it?” the cabbie said, slowing.

  “No!” I yelped, sliding towards the scratchy partition. “Sorry, can you … can you just drive past slowly, I … Just, I need to see if someone’s …”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, and the cab continued its crawl, The Crib sliding towards us slowly. Hunched down, I peered out through the side window as we passed the restaurant.

  Their table was empty.

  Empty.

  “All right?” the cabbie said.

  “Shit,” I murmured. “Shit, no.” The cab interior began to swim.

  Andrew.

  Andrew couldn’t have …

  No. No, don’t be …

  “Stop. Please, stop,” a voice said, my voice said, distant, miles away. “Stop the cab.”

  The cab didn’t stop. The cab began to pick up speed.

  “Stop the cab,” I said loudly. Please … please no.

  “I’ve gotta turn ’round ’ere. ‘Old on …”

  “STOP!” I screamed, slamming my hand against the partition hard. The cab lurched and I slipped from the seat, dizzy, heart pounding. My hands skittered about the latch.

  “Oi, easy there –”
>
  The lock caught, the door swinging wide, cold air and traffic loud in my face as I fell forwards onto the crunchy street.

  No. No he couldn’t.

  I slammed down the street, hands shaking, throat burning, mind mad mad mad with fear, crossing side streets with bounding steps until I skidded up to the oak and chrome front.

  Pressing myself against the glass, eyes pulled back wide, I scanned the table. Scanned all the tables until I was sure.

  They’d gone. Christopher, Laura, Henry, Andrew and my comic book.

  They’d all gone.

  twenty

  “You bastard. You complete … Well bastard about covers it.”

  “You got my note then. Come in, come in.”

  In was a W1 hotel room and a pretty damned swanky one at that. Fat furniture, fat lamps and a fat sprawling bed, the whole room looked like it had enjoyed something of a Christmas blow-out and then posed itself in front of a funhouse mirror.

  The bastard was Andrew.

  “Yes I got your note,” I said, sliding in jumpily. It had been something of an anxious journey over. “The blond fellow, the maître d’? He came out and handed it to me on a silver dish. But not until he’d watched me whirl about in a panic on the pavement for five minutes. Christ, I thought you’d … I don’t know what I thought.”

  “You get to Holborn all right? See O’Shea? Sorry about sending you off like that. S’just I promised him the artist’s impression and he –”

  “It’s fine, fine. Christ, I gotta sit down …” I wandered about the huge room, among side tables and regency armchairs, trying to get my breathing back in order, finally sinking into the folds of the fat couch.

  “I had to leave. Christopher, Laura, everyone. They were all heading out, I couldn’t just sit there.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, dragging my hands over my tired face. “What happened? I saw Henry arrive and Julio in the car waiting for him. Did they come over to the table?”

  Andrew cracked a couple of mini-bar Cokes, perched on the end of the bed and began to explain how the coffee course had panned out. He said something about Laura. Something about Henry. And he might have added something about after dinner mints too, but to tell you the truth, my mind found itself suddenly elsewhere.

  Andrew knowing me as he did however, didn’t take long to notice.

  “It’s in the bathroom,” he said.

  “Hn? What, sorry?” I blinked.

  “What you’ve been sitting there looking about the room for? It’s safe. I hid it in the bathroom.”

  “I wasn’t …” The game was up. “Sorry, I …”

  “Go, take a look,” he said.

  I sat on the couch for an awkward moment, wanting to tell him not to be silly. That if that’s where he’d put it, then that’s where it was. Hell, I didn’t need to check. I trusted him. Weren’t we in this together? God, if I couldn’t trust Benno, a friend from a decade back, a guy I’d virtually lived in the pocket of for three whole years then what the hell was going on?

  Like I said. What I wanted to tell him.

  But sorry is what I said and, hauling myself out of the squashy couch, I scuttled through into the echoey en suite where I found my satchel, wrapped in a robe, under a pile of towels.

  “I don’t blame you old man,” Andrew called through, his voice sad and tired. “Really. I don’t.”

  And I knew he didn’t. Because Andrew understood. He understood what men like Christopher did to you. What they’d done to him all those years ago. The way they spoiled you. Ruined you. Left you to a life of double-checking your change, double-checking your friends.

  I brought the satchel out into the lounge area and busied myself with the clips and clasps, sliding out the firm velvet pouch carefully and peering into its darkness. Action Comics. June 1936. The thin, crinkled paper was faded, the bold red ink washed salmony by a lifetime of All-American sunshine. Around the rusty staples, the paper furred and pulled, the corners dog-eared and thumbed behind its plastic Mylar sleeve. All present and correct. I allowed myself a relieved sigh.

  “Bastard thought all his Christmases had come at once,” Andrew said. “You should have seen him pawing at it, trying to be all blasé? But I swear his eyes were spinning round like a one-armed-bloody bandit. Ding ding ding! Jackpot.”

  “He didn’t suggest you leave it with him? Nothing shifty like that?”

  “Nope. Whole thing was on the level. If I didn’t know who they were, I’d have sworn it was legit. Until the Aussie shows up that is.”

  “Henry?” I tucked the pouch away and slid the satchel behind a plump embroidered cushion.

  “Very shifty. Far too shifty to be just shifty, if you know what I mean.”

  “Right. Absolutely. I mean … nope, sorry, what?”

  “Henry wasn’t some bad grifter blowing his cover,” Andrew said, swigging his Coke. “He was playing it shifty. All backwards glances and hushed voices. If he’d slunk in on his stomach in a black balaclava with suckers on his hands and a safe-cracking kit on his belt, he would have looked less suspicious.”

  “And who was he playing? Another insurance man?”

  “You tell me. He sidled up, handed Christopher this fat, wad-of-cash-sized envelope and thanked them both for a job well done.”

  “A job?”

  “That was all. A job well done. A tap of the nose, a winkity wink and then he slides on out to his Merc.”

  “Did you ask … ?”

  “I did. I figured they were waiting for me to.”

  “And?”

  “Another time perhaps my dear,” Andrew said in Christopher’s oiliest voice.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” Andrew drained his can and crumpled it in his fist. “Another time perhaps. Then it was all mints and cheque-please and off we went.”

  I sat down on the fat couch with a sigh. Andrew watched me from the edge of the bed for a quiet moment.

  “This is a familiar sight, eh?” he smiled eventually.

  He was right. Replace the dull hotel water-colours with a Blues Brothers poster and the laminated room service guide with a back issue of Melody Maker and we could have been back in our halls of residence. One on the bed, one in a chair. Talking it out. Talking it through. Our fathers, our friends, our future.

  “I don’t know what the bloody hell they’re up to,” Andrew said, moving on.

  “Laura didn’t let up?”

  “Boy oh boy, what she can’t do with those toes of hers,” Andrew said with a shake of the head and a less than discreet adjust-of-the-groin. “It was like she was trying to solve a Rubik’s cube down there. Christ I almost tipped the bloody table over. I was trying to listen to Christopher, keep one eye on the satchel and one eye on the Aussie, all the while she’s licking butter off the asparagus and making these mmmmm noises? I mean steady on. Where I come from, women like that are usually accompanied by a five dollar a minute premium-rate phone bill.”

  “All part of their plan, y’think?”

  “I don’t know. It’s what I thought to begin with,” Andrew said, getting up and tugging off his tie. “But it was almost like Christopher didn’t approve. He kept shooting her these looks, muttering behind his menu. Like she was his teenage daughter or something. Maybe … ? Oh I don’t know,” he shrugged, moving over to the large mirror over the dressing table. He peered in closely, smoothing his clean chin, pushing his hair from his face.

  “What? What’s that? Maybe … ?”

  “It could be, of course, that she was just …” He stood back, checking his reflection again. One profile, then the other. “I mean … ?”

  “Benno, old chap. You’ve always been a handsome devil. Even ten years ago when you had plankton growing in your beard. And yes, now you’re a New York big shot with the suits and the shoulders, but really …”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Shut-up. I’m just saying, it didn’t seem to be part of the script. It is possible, y’know.”

  “That you’
re so irresistible she’d put an eighty-grand con at risk?”

  “Well I don’t know, do I? I’m just telling you what … shit!”

  We both stopped and listened.

  A hurried knuckle knocked on his door again. We exchanged glances.

  “Room service?” I whispered. “Maybe they’ve sorted out your laundry?”

  “Could be. Yes, yes, bound to be. ’Bout time,” and Andrew moved over to the door. “It hasn’t been adding to O’Shea’s confidence in my negotiating skills, having me turn up for meetings in a New York Mets sweatshirt.”

  “Unless you’re right of course and it’s Laura,” I said, sitting back, allowing myself a small smile. “Unable to keep you from her pants for a moment longer.”

  Andrew peered through the spyhole.

  And then he turned back towards me, face pale and slack.

  “No,” I said.

  “She’s outside. She’s outside the room. Now.”

  The next thirty seconds are currently appearing on a seaside summer-season stage near you under the direction of Ray Cooney and the title of “What Ho, Matron, You’re Sitting On My Collectables” (AKA Capes, Pants and Boompsie-Daisy!)

  I legged it about the room, elbows akimbo, Andrew hissing hiding-place suggestions at me and trying to get his hair tidy. We shoved the satchel back into the bathroom hurriedly, stacking tumbling towels on top before remembering it was meant to be Andrew’s anyway and positioning it as casually as we could on the bed.

  “Underneath,” Andrew hissed, grabbing my arm.

  There was another knock.

  “One second!” he shouted. “Underneath.”

  “The bed?! I’m not hiding under the bed. For Chrissakes, I’ll … I’ll hide in the bathroom.”

  “She might need the bathroom. Go, under the bed. Quick.”

  “Fuck it,” I said and dropped awkwardly to the carpet in a tangle of unsupple limbs. I began to feed myself in feet first like a letter into a fax machine, pile burning my elbows.