Conman

by Richard Asplin

  “I-I’m aware of that. It’s just …” I looked up. Over Chewbacca’s hairy head, I could see Andrew, poster tubes under his arm, chatting to Schwartz from the bookshop next-door, apologising for his blocked entrance. “It’s just that I …” My stomach rolled over queasily. “Well there’s something I need to do. But I can’t afford to just write off –”

  “Your co-exhibitor will be in attendance though? Maurice Bennett … Will he be –”

  “No. No, Maurice and I … No. It’s just me. Is there nothing you can do to help me out? Nothing at all?”

  There was, it appeared, nothing she could do.

  I hung up and breathed out slowly, eyes closed, face in my hands. Somewhere distantly, Judy Garland was urging me to not only come on, but to forget my troubles and get happy. Easy for her to say.

  The slam-slam of the van doors snapped me back to earth. Andrew moved back into the shop, shutting the door with a jingle and retrieving his hot chocolate while I showered him with thanks.

  “What are old college pals for? Besides, I’m keeping my head down. Nobody at the office is very keen on what I’ve done with O’Shea’s capital. His short-term instant access account I told you about? Turns out the old bastard was right. Keatings had every intention of getting as much interest from his millions in the three days as we could. Best I keep out of their way, so I thought I’d drop by. Any joy with Earl’s Court?”

  I explained the lack of joy.

  “God. This whole thing really couldn’t have come at a worse time, could it?”

  “Not really,” I sighed. “I should move that van anyway. I’m blocking Schwartz’s door,” and I swept up the keys from the desk, getting to my feet.

  “I suppose … Hell, I suppose no one would blame you, y’know, if you just …”

  “If I just … ?”

  Andrew looked at me.

  “With everything else? The summons, the exhibition, the Maurice fellow? Plus Jane? Your family? I’m just saying old man, no one could blame you for maybe just telling Laura …”

  The shop went quiet. Judy told us that if we felt like singing, we should sing.

  Neither of us did, much.

  “Well …” and Andrew shrugged, popping the top off his cup and taking a sudden interest in its contents.

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Hmn? No no, nothing. Mmm, this is good,” and he wiped a finger about the lid.

  “Benno?”

  “I just mean if you called it off. Told her you’d changed your mind. That you’d had second thoughts. I for one would totally understand. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “You want to call it off?”

  “Me? No no, God no. I’m just saying. If you did, I’d understand. If you thought it had all got a little out of hand.”

  “You want to call it off, don’t you?”

  “No, no no,” Andrew stressed. “God no. Absolutely not.” He sipped his drink and perched himself on the edge of the desk.

  “Okay. Let me move the van,” I said and shuffled up the shop.

  “Yes,” a small voice said behind me as I reached for the door. “Yes I do.”

  I turned. Andrew sat there, chewing the inside of his cheek. Something about the look was familiar. A distant memory stumbled past like an Autumn wasp.

  “I want out.”

  “Benno …”

  “It’s getting … I mean bloody hell. Bullets? Blood bags in our shirts? Phoney road-blocks? The crazy woman is fixing to engineer a bloodbath.”

  “She said we wouldn’t be involved. Couldn’t be implicated. They’ll be wiping each other –”

  “Wiping each other out, right. Like that makes it okay. It’s a gangland slaying. A gangland bloody slaying on the streets of Earl’s Court.”

  The years had fallen away and the Andrew writhing in front of me was an angsty, socially responsible, beardy eco-warrior, with a Greenpeace sticker on his guitar and an oil-soaked guillemot in his arms. The New York swagger was gone. The big-cocked, big-business big-shot had been substituted at the eleventh hour for his own ghost of lectures past. A good man. An honourable man. A man of principle.

  “I can’t do this. Be part of this. I can’t.”

  “Benno –”

  “Performing lines? Hold your horses old stick, I saw this first. I just …”

  “Benno –”

  “… That’s eighty grand’s worth of comic book. Why should we trust you with it? I can’t do it. I won’t. Knowing she’s going to …” Andrew shook his head. “You might be comfortable with all this, old man, but that’s you. I can’t –”

  “What? What does that mean?” I interrupted. “Comfortable?”

  “You. Hurting people. Harming people. Leaving them … leaving them for dead at the side of the road.”

  “Wha-? What are you talking about?” I said.

  “I mean with your father and everything. It’s something you’ve been around.”

  “Wait, you think I’m comfortable with what my father did? Holding up a bookmaker’s? Shooting that woman? What is it, killing’s in my family’s blood? I’m more up for this plan because it’s in my nature?! Jesus …”

  “No,” Andrew said, confused, angry. “I’m sorry, old man, I didn’t mean –”

  “I’m doing this for one reason. One reason. My family. Lana. Jane. When I think about losing them, when I think about going on without them? Me? Alone. Just …” The words caught fat in my throat. “Screw them. After everything they did, what should I do? Walk away? No. No way. Let them wipe each other out. Lions versus lions is at least a fair fight. Well he’s got a fair fight now.”

  “I know, I know, but … God, it’s so … I mean, road blocks? What do you know about road blocks? Do you know how you’re going to disable the van?”

  “No, but I’ve got the manual. It can’t be too tricky. Bonnet up. Unscrew the … the whassit. Disconnect the spark … burettor … cable. Thing,” I coughed.

  “Great. That’s confidence inspiring.”

  “I’ll manage it.”

  “But she’s nuts,” Andrew implored. “This plan of hers? You swap this, I swap that? Giving her your passport for heaven’s sake?”

  “She said she needed it. The guy –”

  “She said?” Andrew threw his hands in the air like a Jewish mother. “Well, if she said …”

  “Her plan needs a gun and that’s what the gun-getter wants. What do you want her to do? Offer him roller-boots and an Etch-A-Sketch instead? He isn’t Noel fucking Edmonds.”

  “I know, I know. But –”

  “The man sells handguns for passports and Laura traded hers years ago. There’s no way you’re handing over yours. You’ve got a wife and family expecting you home. I’m not going to be the one standing in the way of that. You’ve …” I looked at him. “You’ve done enough for me over the years. We never talk about … it, but –”

  “Forget that. That’s not …” Andrew gnashed and writhed. “I just –”

  “What?” I pushed. He wasn’t looking at me. “Yesterday you were fine with this. When we went through the plan? You said he had it coming. Live by the sword, all that. What aren’t you telling me?”

  Andrew sighed, chin in his chest and reached behind him, tugging a buckled piece of heavy stationery from his hip pocket, tossing it across to me. I caught it. Crackled it open carefully.

  “When I said the office weren’t keen on my initiative,” Andrew said. “I mean they really aren’t keen.”

  When sitting down with the nice people at Pront-A-print, the marketing bods at Keatings had plumped for a classy, well-spaced letterhead. A rich navy colour on a weighty cream paper. Formal, classic, dependable. Just the sort of impression you’d want to create in fact if you were in the business of persuading wealthy investors to buy and sell expensive office complexes in the major financial capitals of the world. Everything about the letter in my hand said a long tradition of i’s dotted with creaking oak and t’s crossed in hand-tooled leather.
Even the language employed had a whiff of brandy and cigar. There was none of that chummy, open-door, dress-down Friday nu-bizniss speak. Nothing was being run up a ballpark, no hot-buttons were being pushed nor was anyone blue-skying a platformed networking solution.

  No. Andrew simply was being asked to appreciate that (clear throat) these are not the negotiations of a future partner.

  “This O’Shea thing. Me moving his money. The private account. It’s caused … doubts.”

  “Doubts?”

  “My making partner at Keatings, my whole future in this business, is dependent on closing the O’Shea deal.”

  “Which you’re about to do?”

  “Right,” Andrew said. “I’m about to do. Me. I pulled this out of the fire. Going the extra mile like this? Opening this private account for him? It’s turned O’Shea around on the whole firm. Keatings’ greed was about to blow the whole shebang. O’Shea was in my office shouting, yelling – I ain’t some fetlock-tugging farmhand. So I come up with this account move idea and bang – he’s all smiles. I’ve not only saved this deal, but when he comes to unload the Holborn site in a year he’ll come to me. His millionaire golfing chums will come to me.”

  I looked over the letter again.

  “It doesn’t sound like New York know that?”

  “No but they will. They will when I walk into the New York office on Monday morning with the O’Shea deal – the legendary O’Shea deal – done. When I show them his letter of recommendation. When I show them my red notebook full of all of O’Shea’s friends and contacts.”

  The shop fell silent, the MGM Greats having shut off. There was just the grind of the wheezy fan-heater and the chilly sigh of early evening traffic.

  “What I’m saying is … the deal. The whole thing? It completes Friday. It’s a big day. I can’t screw this up. I can’t let a single hiccup blow this deal. This deal is my future. My family’s future. Partner? Corner office? The Long Island house?”

  My heart sank, leaden and dull.

  “I know … I know what this means old stick, I do. But I just don’t know if I can risk it. There are escalating penalties for every hour past noon the money isn’t transferred. And you need me to spend all morning dressed up like a geek, running around with a comic book in a briefcase and a bag of corn syrup under my shirt … ?”

  “But …” I began, chewing my lip. “But y-you said Christopher was planning the con for the morning?” I eased gingerly. “Ten o’clock wasn’t it?” I was pushing it, I know. Andrew wanted out and had good reason to.

  But I had a wife, a daughter, a business and fifty thousand other pretty good reasons myself.

  “Your deal with O’Shea isn’t until noon …” I added. I was building a case with delicate, fragile fingers like it were a flimsy house of cards. “Even if Laura’s plan over-runs, which she said it can’t, mightn’t you still not be able … I-I mean, I understand what you’re saying old friend …”

  “I know,” Andrew nodded. He looked up at me. “I know.”

  “And … hell,” I grinned, trying to both lighten the mood and somehow get Andrew back on side. “What happened to my chess partner? The oceanographer with the Arran sweater and the saving the whales? What would he say if he heard you banging on about corner offices and partnerships?”

  Andrew shifted a little uncomfortably, his demons waking, yawning, scratching, searching for their pitchforks and to-do lists.

  “And God, what about revenge? Revenge on those bastards who forced you to grow up and turned you into this corporate machine in the first place? This is your chance to hit back at them. How long have you been waiting for that?”

  Andrew writhed some more.

  “This is your one chance. For the years of self-loathing. God, for the eco-warrior you never became. The people who ruined your life, ruined my life. Tomorrow they’re going to get what’s coming to them and you’re being offered a ringside –”

  “And then what? Huh? Then what?”

  “What do you mean? Then I get my money back, my life back, and you close your deal and –”

  “And everything’s put right again?”

  “Well …”

  “This? All this?” and he plucked at his shirt with contemptuous fingertips. “This. This is what I am now. This is what they made me. Being the man who helped the man who helped the woman who helped the man get a crook killed isn’t going to change that. This is what I am now. Revenge isn’t going to change that.”

  “Well,” I said, letting that thought settle. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I am.”

  “So Christopher wins. The bad guys win. All of them.”

  Andrew stared at the floor, shoulders jumpy. I could see the muscles in his jaw bulge and tighten as he wrestled with it all. He looked up, eyes fixed, mouth tight.

  “Revenge,” he said softly, clearing his throat a little.

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “I know. It’s a dirty word. Not what good boys are taught. We’re meant to be … meant to be above it. Superior. But you think when a crook gets away with ripping someone off, he gives them a second thought?”

  “That’s not the point,” Andrew said.

  “Mugs,” I said. “That’s what they think. That’s what my father thought. Saps.”

  I let him think about this. Let it sting a little.

  “You’re why they get away with it,” I said flatly. Andrew lifted his chin, mouth tightening. He wasn’t happy with that. Not happy at all. “You,” I pushed. “People who say nothing. Who do nothing. Who let it go. You’re the reason all this … all this crap is called escapism,” and I threw my hands in the air, at the peeling posters and portraits. “Why stories where good men triumph and bad guys are punished are called fantasy. Because it doesn’t happen. Because good guys don’t take revenge. We don’t fight back. We don’t punish. We turn the other cheek and get fucked all over again.”

  Andrew said nothing. He just stared at the dusty lino.

  “Geeks, they call us. Weirdos. Ha. Us who like to be inspired, like to be lifted by simple stories in which good men stand up and fight. Weirdos.”

  Andrew looked at me, then around at the costumed characters on the walls.

  “Revenge is what they deserve. Justice. I dunno, call it … call it the law of the street. Eye for eye. Whatever. Tomorrow we’re gonna let them do to each other what they’d do to us without blinking. And we leave them for dead.”

  “Dead,” Andrew swallowed.

  “It’s the life he’s chosen.”

  Andrew looked at me, eyes narrowing a little. He was deciding something.

  “Say that again,” he croaked. He breathed deep, chest filling.

  “It’s what he deserves,” I said.

  Andrew stood quietly for a moment. Then slowly, he sat up a bit, took a long glug from his paper cup and wiped smudgy chocolate fingerprints on his T-shirt.

  “It’s not, you know?” he said flatly. “It’s not what he deserves. Him and his type.”

  “Benno –”

  “It’s too good for him.”

  “Too – ? Being shot in the chest by his accomplice?”

  “He deserves to live,” Andrew said. He was breathing deep. He took a last draining suck and dumped his empty cup in the bin. “A long, long life of misery and regret. Live with what he’s done.”

  “He’s living with it now,” I said sadly. “Doesn’t seem to bother him overly.”

  “Oh we’d have to do it properly. Painfully. Plan it out. Make him suffer.” Andrew’s eyes got distant, lost in the black thoughts of revenge. Revenge on the world that stole his soul.

  “We’ve only got twenty-four hours, old mate. It’s this or he walks.”

  “You’re right,” Andrew shrugged, shaking off the darkness. “I was just …”

  “Tomorrow morning. We go in, we get out and we’re done. You off to your promotion, your corner office, your New York partnership,” and I gestured at the heavy letter. “Me back
to my family. All over. Like nothing ever happened. They won’t know what’s hit ’em.”

  Andrew looked down at his letter once again. He looked up at me. Cleared his throat.

  “No. No, that’s it. I don’t need this bloody shit.”

  I grinned.

  “I’m not doing it. I’ll walk. I’ll go out there, tell him to keep his money, take my bloody comic book and walk. I only came to you for insurance. All this tricky stuff was your idea. Forget it.”

  “And it’s … ?” I prompted.

  “Right, right. And it’s Mr Mayo, to you pal,” Andrew smiled.

  twenty-six

  “Bloody hell old man, that was quick. Have you got the phone in bed with you or something?”

  “Something like that.” I blinked hard, rubbing my eyes and peering about the chill blue stillness of the sitting room. Streaky stirred, waking on my lap and choosing that moment for a quick three-sixty and a ten-thousand mile claws-check. I shoo-ed him ow-bugger-ing from my bare legs onto the floor with a wince.

  “Hello – ?”

  “It’s just the cat. What’s wrong? You all right?” I got up, creeping with sticky bare feet to the sitting room door, listening for Jane. Down the hall, the mattress gave a heart-gripping creak …then all was still.

  “Glad I caught you. I need a favour. This corn syrup stuff Christopher left for me to practise with?”

  “In the chest-bag?”

  “It’s stickier than I thought and I’ve gone and got it all over the clothes you lent me. The bloody dry-cleaners have left me with just my suits until lunchtime …”

  “You need some more gear?”

  “Would you mind old man? Sorry to be an arse. Today’s going to be complicated enough as it is, I know.”

  “No problem,” I whispered. “I’ll stick some in the van. How you feeling? Ready for this?”

  “Pretty good, pretty good. Can’t sleep though.”

  “Me neither,” I said, moving back to the window, peering out at the rented Transit parked in the November darkness. “Been up since four. What the hell are we doing, old friend?”

  “Our bit. Like you said. Lions versus lions. Bringing a little justice to the world. Talking of which, I’ve had a thought. Made a decision about our conversation yesterday.”